Only human – the biggest risk factor in long-term space missions

By Richard Ingham

PARIS, (AFP) – What's the biggest hurdle to setting up a colony on the Moon or getting mankind to Mars and beyond? Aliens? Asteroids? Money? Try: humans themselves.

Experts poring over plans to return to the Moon by 2018 and later stride to Mars believe the greatest-ever gamble in the history of space may ultimately depend on keeping the mind and body sound.

Anxiety, loneliness and tensions with crewmates, a daily battle to maintain fitness and avoid accidents, DNA-shredding radiation from solar flares or cosmic rays – all these make mental and physical health the key to whether a long-term mission will succeed or fail catastrophically.

Benny Elmann-Larsen, coordinator of physiology in human space flight at the European Space Agency (ESA), says psychological stress could be the biggest problem of all.

"The human factor is the most uncertain factor," Elmann-Larsen said in an interview with AFP. A trip to the Moon, as with the Apollo missions, would last only a few days, which is sufficiently short to be bearable.

But life in a lunar colony – presumably several interconnected container-sized structures – would present months of confinement, boredom and monotony.

Fortunately, a wealth of research conducted aboard nuclear submarines, in outposts in Antarctica and on long-duration missions on the Soviet space station Mir and the International Space Station (ISS) has thrown up a number of solutions, says Elmann-Larsen.

One of them is to use psychologists in mission control, helping to ease conflicts between crews on the ground and those in space, and helping to devise countermeasures to cope with onboard stress, says Nick Kanas, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco.

For example, crew members are encouraged to have frequent contacts with family and friends on Earth, using audiovisual links or email, and resupply missions bring up treats and gifts.

But going to Mars is a quite different proposition, says Kanas. Unless there is a breakthrough in our primitive technology of chemical rockets, it would take about six months to get there, assuming that the Red Planet and Earth happen to be relatively close in their differing tracks around the Sun.

Factor in, say, a year or more for doing some exploration and research – which after all, is the whole point – and then a longer ride home because the planets' positions will have changed, and you're talking about two and a half, maybe three years.

As Earth recedes, gradually becoming a tiny bluish speck in the inky cosmos, the sense of isolation and cabin fever could become oppressive.

Morale-boosting efforts and support measures that were possible in low-Earth orbit or the Moon would be almost impossible.
There would be few supply flights, or quite possibly none at all, and the distances are such that it would take a crew member 45 minutes to ask a question from the folks back home and 45 minutes to get the reply.

That throws the onus on the crew, likely to range between four and seven, depending on how much money can be mustered.

More people means more volume and mass for life support systems and accommodation, which means lifting more material from Earth, and the cost rises hugely.

But how half-a-dozen people can get along 24-7 in a large tin can without becoming neurotic, or worse, is a big unknown, says Kevin Fong, co-director of the Centre for Aviation Space and Extreme Environment Medicine (CASE Medicine) at University College London.

"In space, no one can hear you scream," the British weekly New Scientist aptly headlined an article on space stress last year.
A 110-day experiment in isolation that was carried out in a mock space station in Moscow in 1999 showed how things can badly go wrong.

One module housed four Russian men; the other, three international test subjects, from Austria, Canada and Japan.

Reports within the space community say that during a New Year's celebration two of the Russian men engaged in a 10-minute fist-fight that left blood on the walls before they were restrained by the other men.

The mission commander hauled the only female, Judith Lapierre, a Canadian, out of sight of the experiment's cameras and twice gave her a French kiss that she fought in vain to resist.

The Japanese participant was so traumatised by this episode that he quit the experiment all together. The Canadian and Austrian, a male scientist, continued with the mission – but insisted on having locks fitted to their module door.

Fong says many potential problems can be avoided in advance by weeding out crew candidates with a family history of mental illness and with the right profile for collective living, and by a smart but rigorous training process.

But, as the case has shown of love-struck astronaut Lisa Nowak, accused of attempted murder, screening and training may not compensate for the unpredictability of human nature, good or bad.

Fong says there is little consensus on many things when it comes to long-term mission.