Have Space Suit , Will Travel
Space programs have historically been limited by government budget constraints, but during the last two decades, a few adventurous billionaires began investing in space technology.
Commercial space travel is no longer a shot in the dark, thanks to rapid advancements in aerospace technology and a shift in how space technology is funded; private sector space travel is an emerging industry and changing the way we view the universe.
That being said, commercial space flight does have it downsides.
When astronauts first began flying in space, NASA worried about “space madness,” a mental malady they thought might arise from humans experiencing micro gravity and claustrophobic isolation inside a cramped spacecraft high above the Earth.
They assumed leaving Earth would be so traumatic, humans would have to respond in some way, which included going crazy or becoming spiritually changed or challenged by spaceflight.
Currently space madness is still only theoretical, there are no record of astronauts behaving violently, either towards themselves or their fellow crew members, while on a mission. (That’s probably thanks to NASA’s intense psychological screening process.)
Such early concerns of NASA psychiatrists led to careful screening of the first astronauts drawn from military test pilots.
- Edwin ” Buzz” Aldrin Jr.former astronaut, and lunar module pilot on the Apollo 11 mission, he and mission commander Neil Armstrong were the first two humans to land on the Moon
As Aldrin tells it, he suddenly found himself sinking into what he calls “a morass of despair.”He became nearly dysfunctional, crying often and sometimes unable even to complete “a coherent sentence.”Like other astronauts, he concealed his problem, hiding it for a time under the rubric of “family counseling.”
Aldrin believes his struggles stemmed, in part, from his adventure in space.
“My life was highly structured,” he wrote. “
There had always existed a major goal of one sort or another … What possible goal could I add now?
There simply wasn’t one, and without a goal I was like an inert ping-pong ball being batted about by the whims and motivations of others.”
Even today, It’s a cold hard reality that astronauts could potentially lose their sanity during the 260 days it takes to get from Earth to Mars, or even just orbiting the Earth in the claustrophobia-inducing ISS.
The opening of spaceflight to private citizens who fly as “space tourists” in the 21st century may again revive milder “space madness” concerns.
“Virtually every spaceflight pioneer, including Werner von Braun, was steeped in the notion of spaceflight being good for its own sake, but justified it for military, business or technical capability reasons.”
Such people range from the earliest rocket pioneers to the private spaceflight entrepreneurs of today.
As we see space become more democratized with people who fly in space not being former test pilots, there are concerns about sending untrained millionaires into space, shuffling them into tiny quarters and deep isolation, without having had a lifetime of training for stressful situations.
Such concerns previously arose when NASA opened up its space shuttle program to more civilian scientists, engineers and teachers, but the civilian astronauts soon proved how well they could perform.
Still, space faring nations already look beyond the imagined fears of space madness in planning for the real human challenges of new space missions.
China has carefully screened its prospective astronauts (called taikonauts) for compatibility among possible space crews — an issue that was rarely considered during the early days of spaceflight.
For the most part, U.S. astronauts and their Russian cosmonaut counterparts have mostly maintained their cool during long missions aboard space stations such as Skylab, Mir and the International Space Station.
I mean sure, there have been arguments, disagreements and occasional shouting, but there are no examples of what we might consider freak-outs or psychotic breaks in any space missions, though a couple of Soviet crews in past decades are believed to have experienced psychological problems.
U.S. astronaut John Blaha also admitted feeling depressed at the start of a four-month stay at the Soviets’ Mir space station more than a decade ago.
Though sense of spaceflight’s trans-formative power arose from both science fiction stories and from legitimate uncertainties about how traveling aboard a powerful rocket into the unknown might affect the human psyche, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have to prepare for it. Each NASA flight and ISS , astronauts are encouraged to find creative ways of keeping the mood light.
Astronauts on the ISS also depend on each other for morale purposes The first-ever pizza party in space is getting sky-high reviews. In this Nov. 18, 2017 photo provided by NASA, from left, American Mark Vande Hei, Russian Sergei Ryazanskiy, Italian Paolo Nespoli, American Joe Acaba and American Randy Bresnik display the results of their made-from-scratch pizza pies at the International Space Station. The fixings flew up in November on a commercial supply ship. (NASA via AP)
During missions in 1985 and 1995, shuttle commanders put padlocks on the spaceships’ hatches as a precaution since they didn’t know the scientists aboard very well.
NASA and its Russian counterpart drew up the checklist for the space station in 2001. Hartsfield said NASA has a nearly identical set of procedures for the shuttle.
seen above:
- For his birthday, US astronaut Scott Kelly was given a gorilla suit and decided to have some fun with it on the International Space Station.
The military has a similar protocol for restraining or confining violent, mentally unstable crew members who pose a threat to themselves or others in nuclear submarines or other dangerous settings.
The space-station checklist is part of a 1,051-page document that contains instructions for dealing with every possible medical situation in space, including removing a tooth. Handling behavioral emergencies takes up five pages.
First aid kits at the International Space Station come equipped with tranquilizers, anti-depression, anti-anxiety, and anti-psychotic medications.
(On flights to and from the ISS, which generally take less than two weeks, kits contain anti-psychotics, but not antidepressants, which generally take a few weeks to begin working.)
Once at the space station, astronauts are required to speak with a psychologist back on Earth twice a month.
The reasoning is that any serious psychological issues—such as the kind that would cause an astronaut to act out in a life-threatening manner—would take longer than two weeks to develop.
Because mentally unstable astronaut could cause all kinds of havoc which could endanger the three crew members aboard the space station or the six or seven who typically fly aboard the shuttle, the crew members might have to rely in large part on brute strength to subdue an out-of-control astronaut.
There are no weapons on the space station or the shuttle.
A gun would be out of the question; a bullet could pierce a spaceship and could kill everyone.
There are also no stun guns on hand either, if needed, an out-of-control astronaut can be restrained.
If an astronaut has a psychotic break or behaves in a suicidal or homicidal manner, crew members are asked to carry out a three-part procedure.
First, they’re supposed to bind his or her wrists and ankles with grey (duct) tape.
“Talk with the patient while you are restraining her/him,” the instructions say.
“Explain what you are doing, and that you are using a restraint to ensure that he/she is safe.”
Next, use a bungee cable to tie him or her down.
Then offer oral Haldol, an anti-psychotic drug used to treat agitation and mania, and Valium.
Finally, if the astronaut still does not cooperate, the drugs can forcibly inject the individual with tranquilizers.
ACESs are designed to help astronauts survive in case any accident occurs during the take-off or landing of a space shuttle.
The EVAs, on the other hand, are designed specifically for spacewalking.
The white suit has a water cooling system, necessary for survival in outer space and is more of a primary life support system.
Given the difficult conditions in the space, EVA suits comes with ample supply of oxygen, battery power, and a radio.
Bizarre Love Triangle
It consumed so much of NASA’s dwindling budget that there has been little left to fund a replacement (since the mid-eighties, the agency has spent about $4 billion on a succession of false starts, including the X-33, the Delta Clipper, and the National Aerospace Plane).Indeed, many of the agency’s problems, including crew safety, turn out to be rooted in its declining investment in manned spaceflight.Diaper Duty
It’s not that Lisa Nowak was the first astronaut ever to be arrested that truly gripped the nation in 2007.
It was the diapers.
They sparked thousands of jokes.
Headlines like “Dark Side of the Loon” and “In Space No One Can Hear You Pee” proliferated.
Talk show hosts couldn’t resist the easy target.
“As you know,” snickered Jay Leno, “she went to court yesterday and was released in her own incontinence.”
The trouble started in November 2006, when Bill met Colleen Shipman during a training mission at the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida.
Colleen, who worked for the Air Force testing hardware for spaceflights, was attractive, petite, full of energy, and well liked by her neighbors, who called her the Little General.
She had graduated from Penn State University in 2002 with degrees in German and chemical engineering.
In spite of the distance between them, they traveled to see each other on weekends and quickly fell in love.
When Bill flew his December shuttle mission, she sent him an e-mail in outer space with a subject line that read: “I need a rubdown.”
The message itself said: “Will have to control myself when I see you. First urge will be to rip your clothes off, throw you on the ground and love the hell out of you.”
Back on earth, his e-mails to her tended to be sedate, as in, “I need to see you. I am having Colleen withdrawals.
Must see Colleen.” She was less restrained: “Lots of love coming your way . . . and kisses and a great big giant hug with my legs around you.”
Bill insisted to Colleen that he had ended his affair with Lisa, whom she had never met.
“When he told me he had this relationship and that he broke it off with her,”
Colleen later told the Orlando police, “I asked him, ‘Are you sure that she’s okay with this?
Because you know how these things go.’
And I said, ‘Is there gonna be some crazy lady showing up at my door trying to kill me?’
And he said, ‘No, no, no, she’s not like that.
She’s fine with it. She’s happy for me.’”
In fact, it was January before Bill finally brought himself to tell Lisa that his feelings for her had changed.
“I told her that I had met Colleen and I had fallen in love and I was wanting to pursue an exclusive relationship with Colleen,” he told the Orlando police.
“She seemed a little disappointed, but she seemed to be accepting of that” was how Bill put it.
Lisa, of course, had not accepted any of this, though Bill Oefelein, said he ended things with Nowak a few weeks prior, really he was stringing her a long.
Using the key still in her possession, she’d then broken into his Houston apartment and discovered the identity of her rival: the blond, Colleen’ Shipman, who was 10 years her junior.
- LisaNowak , Bill Oefelein, Colleen Shipman
Nowak then broke into his computer and found Colleen’s travel itinerary for a visit to Houston from February 1 to February 4.
She also found their steamy e-mails.
She concocted a plan: She would drive to Orlando, where Colleen was landing at 1 a.m. on February 5 after her trip to Houston.
She would confront her.
She printed out maps of her driving route, the Orlando airport, and the neighborhood in Cape Canaveral where Colleen lived.
She made obsessively detailed, handwritten lists of the things she would bring: plastic gloves, glasses, makeup, sneakers (black, size 8-9), black sweats, a sharp knife, a gun, binoculars, a baseball cap, and food, water, and a cooler for the car.
- Lisa Nowak at NASA and 7 months later at the time of her arrest.
On February 3 she set off, wearing a special space diaper known as a mag (shorthand for “maximum absorption garment”), which astronauts use when they have to be in space suits for an extended period of time, such as on the launchpad.
Lisa later told the police she wore them to avoid having to take bathroom breaks.
By the time she arrived in Orlando, after stopping for the night in DeFuniak Springs, Florida, and registering at the hotel as “Linda Turner,” she had used two of them.
When in Texas….
Colleen, meanwhile, was having something of an odd weekend with Bill in Houston.
For one thing, she had discovered Lisa’s bike in his apartment, which had angered her.
She had confronted him about it and made him promise to get rid of it. “It made me very uncomfortable,” she later said.
“It made me want to pull away from this relationship … because it made me think that he didn’t quite cut his ties, maybe.”
Something else caused her to be even more suspicious.
While the two were lying in bed, after dinner and drinks and a night out, Bill had called her Lisa.
- Former NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak sits with her attorney Cheney Mason during her pre-trial
By this time, Nowak had already driven 900 miles from Houston to Orlando.
In her car, she had a trench coat, black wig, pepper spray, a BB gun, rope, trash bags, an 8-inch knife and other items.
Police reports claimed that she still had space diapers with her, so she wouldn’t have to stop for bathroom breaks.
Colleen landed in Orlando shortly after 1 a.m.
She learned that her bags would not arrive for nearly two and a half hours, so she decided to wait.
There is a certain Loony Tunes cartoon aspect to what happened next,
Unbeknownst to her, Lisa (who had never met her but knew what Colleen looked like from a photograph Bill had) was there, surveilling her, wearing a hooded trench coat, round-rimmed red glasses, rolled-up blue jeans, black sneakers, and a black wig.
Nowak following Shipman
There were very few people in the airport.
At roughly 3:30, Colleen boarded an empty parking lot shuttle bus.
Lisa followed, dressed so outlandishly that Colleen couldn’t help staring at her, then got off at Colleen’s stop and, as Colleen was getting into her car, came running across the parking lot.
When she got into her car, she heard the running footsteps and quickly locked the door.
Nowak slapped the window and tried to open the car door, asked for a ride, then started crying.
Hand on door, slapping the window she said, “Can you help me, please?” she said.
“My boyfriend was supposed to pick me up and he is not here.
I’ve been traveling and it’s late.
Can you give me a ride to the parking office?”
- Colleen Shipman testifies against Lisa Nowak
Colleen replied, “No. If you need help, I’ll send someone to help you.” which truthfully probably saved her life.
Lisa then asked to use her cell phone.
When Colleen told her the battery was dead, Lisa said she could not hear her and started crying, so Colleen opened her window two inches.
That was when Lisa sprayed her with pepper spray. “You bitch!” said Colleen, who then quickly drove away.
Shipman fled the scene, and called the police.
She was shaken but unhurt.
A few minutes later the police arrested Lisa, who was spotted,by the first responding officer, trying to throw away a bag containing a loaded BB gun (which looked like a 9mm semiautomatic) and the wig; she was carrying another bag, containing the steel mallet and a four-inch buck knife.
When asked what she’d planned to do with the weapons, Lisa said that she had not intended to hurt Colleen but wanted only to scare her into talking.
If Colleen had refused, she’d planned to use the BB gun to force her to talk.
She offered no explanation for the knife, the hammer, the rubber tubing, or the plastic gloves.
Police also found bondage photos and drawings on a computer disk in her car, including images of a nude woman.
Police said it was not clear who the woman was.
Later that day, Lisa was charged with attempted murder, attempted kidnapping, attempted burglary, battery, and destruction of evidence.
No astronaut had ever been arrested before, let alone charged with felonies.
At the time they added the attempted murder charge (which has since been dropped), the police made mention of “the detailed planning by Mrs. Nowak … the fact that she wore a disguise, her prolonged surveillance of the victim, the fact that Mrs. Nowak passed up numerous opportunities to contact the victim.”
Which seemed like a strikingly different than the interview she gave 7 months before , prior to her space mission in 2006.
She was released on $25,500 bail, fitted with an ankle bracelet with a GPS device (so that any attempt to reenter the state of Florida would be detected), and led with her head covered to a hotel so that the media could not photograph her.
The next day a car met her plane on the tarmac at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport and deposited her at the neat, 3,100-square-foot $291,000 home northeast of NASA that she had once shared with a happy family.
From there, joined by her parents, she peered out as the media storm gathered around her.
While NASA frantically tried to field thousands of calls from reporters who wanted to know about government-issue diapers and steamy e-mails to and from outer space, the now-familiar media circus descended on Clear Lake (at least until Anna Nicole Smith’s sudden death, on February 8, propelled them over to Mexia).
Satellite trucks and TV crews filled the cul-de-sac where Lisa and her family lived. Inside Edition, the Wall Street Journal, and every media outlet in between begged for interviews.
FedEx deliveries from Dr. Phil arrived at the Nowak house. A few days after Lisa’s arrest, the price of an autographed photo of her on eBay hit $10,000.
For the insular and fragile NASA culture, still recovering from the shock of Columbia, this was a sort of extended nightmare.
In the aftermath of the crash, there had been real psychological trauma at the agency: According to one NASA source, there were “several nervous breakdowns” and, among support personnel, one suicide.
It was seen as such a serious problem that therapists were unleashed. “We have this immense loss that we can never undo,” says Paul Hill, the deputy director of mission operations for the space shuttle.
“There was collective and individual counseling, and we brought in various cultural coaches and psychologist types who spent time talking to our folks and boring into our culture.”
Now, in the wake of this crisis of confidence, came an apparently real case of mental illness in an astronaut who had not only flown the previous year but was to be the voice of Mission Control for the next scheduled shuttle flight
“I hate to say this,” a public affairs officer at NASA told me shortly after the incident, “but things are so bad around here it almost feels like Columbia. ( the space mission that was a massive failure)”
It did not help matters that Lisa’s story of love and rejection was particularly dramatic and salacious.
Like most astronauts, she had a résumé that looked nearly superhuman, and it was the very flawlessness of her record that afforded the perfect setup line for the epic tale it took the media about six seconds to spin out: American hero shamed, disgraced, brought low.