In case you missed them, here’s a few pieces I’ve recently written and published in Aeon magazine, Undark magazine, and Smithsonian magazine. Thanks as usual to my excellent editors! I’m only posting brief excerpts here, so if you’re interested, please check out the whole thing using the links below.
You can stay more up-to-date if you follow my electronic newsletter, Ramin’s Space!
Astronaut Karen Nyberg in the International Space Station (Credit: NASA)
How to optimize your headspace on a mission to Mars
Imagine being confined to a metal cell with a couple of other people and few amenities for months or even years. Maybe after that, you’ll be moved to a new compound, but you still have no privacy and extremely limited communication with your family and anyone else in the outside world. You feel both crowded and lonely at the same time, and yet no one comes to treat your emerging mental-health problems.
While this might sound like life in prison, it could just as easily be life as a deep-space explorer, in a sardine can of a rocket hurtling to Mars or a more distant world. Despite years of research by NASA and others, scientists have little insight into the psychological, neurological and sociological problems that will inevitably afflict space travellers battling depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress and personality clashes many millions of miles away from home. Sure, a growing body of research now documents the impact of microgravity on one’s brain and body, along with the exercises and medical attention needed to mitigate the effects. But social isolation, limited privacy, interpersonal issues, along with vast separation from loved ones, remain relatively unexplored.
Even massive Star Trek spaceships – with plenty of space per person – come with counsellors on board, but what if the crew member with counselling training gets injured or falls ill during a critical moment? If morale plummets and rapport among the team disappears, an emergency situation could spell the end of both the astronauts and the mission…
[Read the entire essay in Aeon magazine, published on 12 February.]
Ramin Skibba 