Today was Spacey

I don't know if I have mentioned in any of my posts here, that I began my college career thinking I would become an astrophysicist. I majored in physics for my first two years of school, and minored in philosophy. Unfortunately it wasn't long before I came up short in the math department and realized I'd never make grad school, or if I did, not with the grades necessary to get a job with the space industry, which is where I wanted to be. I thank my lucky stars for that now, seeing as there are probably more astrophysicists driving buses than working for NASA these days.

I actually had two passions in the field; one was astrophysics and one was space habitats. It seemed to me that if we were going to make long trips in space ships, live in space stations or on closed planetary bases where the atmosphere prevented going out, someone should be putting some thought into making those places truly habitable. None of this 'the right stuff' shit, where you just suck it up and live in a tin can for years on end being a high level drone.

While still at the University of Colorado in Boulder, I participated in what was called the GAS can project. That stands for Getaway Special and it was literally a trashcan sized container in which students could send experiments into space. I was involved in an experiment with a very fast growing fungus that we were going to examine to see how plants might grow in micro-gravity (the shuttle doesn't go up high enough to provide true zero gravity conditions). It was scheduled to go up on the Challenger, but that was in 1986, and of course we all know what happened to Challenger that year. It actually blew up while I was in an astronomy course and my professor broke down in tears making the announcement to the class. NOT because he was sad about the human loss, but because he was planning to study interstellar space bubbles using the Hubble Space Telescope and without the shuttle to launch it, he knew it was going to be pushed out indefinitely. Sigh...

Once I switched to biology and agriculture I clung to my passion for space and worked with a plant physiology professor who was competing for a project that involved grinding up volcanic rock to create the closest possible analog to moon dust and seeing if plants could be made to grow in it. Sadly he didn't get the project, some other university did, and that was the last of my involvement in all things space. I sort of ignored it after that, because it was depressing to have been sidelined, but I've always followed it in my 'peripheral consciousness' and I'm a strong supporter of the notion of the privatization of the space industry.

So imagine my surprise as I was thumbing through my APA convention catalog this morning when I found this topic listed at 9am: Human Adaptation to the Extreme Environment of Outer Space. Whoop!!! So off I went, and during that set of talks it was mentioned that there was another presentation to follow entitled Psychology of Cross-Cultural Differences in International Space Activities. Yippee!!!

One of the topics addressed in several of the talks was the concept of a private enterprise, multinational, He3 mining operation on the moon. It was absolutely fascinating!

He3 fusion is a strong candidate for future replacement of petrochemicals. The downside is that the petrochemical industry as a whole is being obstructionist, and NASA, along with it's counterparts in other nations, is an impediment to private enterprise in space in general, and is in competition with this project in particular.

Some of the presenters of other parts of the symposium were with those very agencies, so it was an interesting dance they did. Some of those speaking at this conference in favor of an entrepreneurial endeavor have left the various government run space programs in their countries and are now affiliated with universities around the world doing research.

I did not hear the name "The Artemis Project" nor is there any indication in the program or on their papers that any of the speakers were connected with it, but this is quite clearly what they were talking about, and they described the plans for an actual base in great detail, as well as guidelines for what a team might look like.

Here is some interesting info on both He3 fusion and mineral rights on the moon (the plan I heard outlined was to locate the moon base in Mare Tranquillitatis, where Apollo 11 landed.)

There were presenters from all over the world. Some were engaged in the current International Space Station projects and others had worked or did work for various space agencies. It was fascinating to hear described how badly the human element of all space programs, worldwide, has been managed thus far, and how that is now slowly changing. NASA's "the right stuff" concept just didn't hold up very well in reality, particularly when we started mixing cultures and time zones up there. Numerous surveys of both astronauts and ground support indicated that the participants themselves would like there to be much more work done in addressing cross-cultural problems and personal relations on these missions and projects. Apparently there was an outright ban by NASA on collecting psychological data for years and they are still rather hostile to the concept of mental health planning and maintenance on their missions. Perhaps Lisa Nowak has made them rethink that position and bend a little in the past year. Or then again, maybe they watched that Ren and Stimpy episode, Space Madness...

If the Artemis Project manages to get off the ground (pun intended) the plan is to take into account human needs and personalities as much as technical and engineering elements of the project. The description outlined a team of 15-17 people, divided evenly between female and male. The habitat of choice that is emerging is an inflatable dome, 16 meters in diameter to be buried under the regolith for radiation shielding. Included are such environmental concepts as live plants, themed social dining with alcohol allowed during special occasions, pantry style food, themed decorations for holidays (like non flammable Christmas trees) and many other comfort and social elements. They also plan to have a rotating hierarchy from project to project within the same teams, so that no one person or group is any higher on the totem pole than any other, overall. Over-manned missions would ensure that if something wasn't working, changes to the team structure could be made without jeopardizing the work. It would also allow for specialization, or perhaps sub-specialization, which tends to give people more satisfaction in their work (with crews of 2 and 3 that is not an affordable luxury, everyone must be competent in every area). They even talked about plans to conduct strip mining as 'art' so that they would leave line drawings on the surface rather than a mess. (I see that on the website they talk about leaving it as it was found, so perhaps that has been rethought?)

So some of this material involved plans for what appears to be very likely, but is still technically in the Sci Fi realm, and other discussants and presenters talked about how the ongoing programs are actually being managed. One Canadian presenter was not available because she was busy greeting and working with the returning shuttle crew of the Endeavor on their return from the International Space Station STS-118 mission today!

All-in-all it was a big surprise to find this topic being discussed at all, and to hear that there are growing job opportunities within the space program and space industries for mental health specialists! I'm delighted to hear that there is a mindset that we are definitely going to LIVE in space, and on other planets, and that we need to have a good long think before we wedge people into tin cans and launch them off into the void, expecting they'll just find somehow to get along with each other and stay sane. As it was developed, NASA's manned Mars mission would have last two years for just three people in extremely cramped conditions with no option to escape each other. That has been pushed out into the relatively remote future, so I certainly hope that by then the whole project will look dramatically different. Better yet, it won't be a NASA endeavor at all, but a private, international consortium, and it won't take so long I might miss it, damn it! =)