Why Astronauts Don't Like Shrinks By HILARY HYLTON/AUSTIN

Why Astronauts Don't Like Shrinks By HILARY HYLTON/AUSTIN
http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...0.html?cnn=yes

I like this quote the best:

Dr. Patricia Santy, a Michigan psychiatrist and former NASA flight surgeon
on the Challenger mission said, "They hate doctors in general and
psychiatrists/psychologists in particular because they cannot win in any
interaction with them - at best they can only 'break even'."


Well duh! At worst, the flight surgeon can declare them unfit to fly. At
best, they declare them fit to fly, which to a driven individual like an
astronaut, only means maintaining the status quo. It should come as no
surprise that an astronaut would never willingly provide any information to
the flight surgeon that might result in being declared unfit to fly. In
other words, "Everything's fine doc!"

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

On 9 Feb, 20:51, "Jeff Findley" wrote:
Why Astronauts Don't Like Shrinks By HILARY HYLTON/AUSTINhttp://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1587495,00.html?cnn=yes

I like this quote the best:

Dr. Patricia Santy, a Michigan psychiatrist and former NASA flight surgeon
on the Challenger mission said, "They hate doctors in general and
psychiatrists/psychologists in particular because they cannot win in any
interaction with them - at best they can only 'break even'."

Well duh! At worst, the flight surgeon can declare them unfit to fly. At
best, they declare them fit to fly, which to a driven individual like an
astronaut, only means maintaining the status quo. It should come as no
surprise that an astronaut would never willingly provide any information to
the flight surgeon that might result in being declared unfit to fly. In
other words, "Everything's fine doc!"

There is one other genuine issue and that is that Western society is
hypocritical. There is a gap between how people ought to behave, how
they do behave, and the best way to behave (in terms of mission
success).

Sex is for procreation but in ape societies (we are one despite what
the fundamentalists say) it has great importance in terms of the
cohestion of society.

Let us suppose that the best way to get a cohesive Martian team
(assuming we go there at all!) is for an eaual number of male and
female astronauts to have sex (in the way in which south sea island
cocieties operated). If you select crews ostensibly on a "finger in
the air" basis you could get this right. As soon as you have a formal
evaluation proceedure you will have to admit this. You can't not with
all the fundamentalists around. It seems to be difficult enough to say
that Mars and the Earth are the same age (4.55e9 years).


- Ian Parker

On Feb 10, 8:30 am, "Ian Parker" wrote:
On 9 Feb, 20:51, "Jeff Findley" wrote:



Why Astronauts Don't Like Shrinks By HILARY HYLTON/AUSTINhttp://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1587495,00.html?cnn=yes

I like this quote the best:

Dr. Patricia Santy, a Michigan psychiatrist and former NASA flight surgeon
on the Challenger mission said, "They hate doctors in general and
psychiatrists/psychologists in particular because they cannot win in any
interaction with them - at best they can only 'break even'."

Well duh! At worst, the flight surgeon can declare them unfit to fly. At
best, they declare them fit to fly, which to a driven individual like an
astronaut, only means maintaining the status quo. It should come as no
surprise that an astronaut would never willingly provide any information to
the flight surgeon that might result in being declared unfit to fly. In
other words, "Everything's fine doc!"

There is one other genuine issue and that is that Western society is
hypocritical. There is a gap between how people ought to behave, how
they do behave, and the best way to behave (in terms of mission
success).

Sex is for procreation but in ape societies (we are one despite what
the fundamentalists say) it has great importance in terms of the
cohestion of society.

Let us suppose that the best way to get a cohesive Martian team
(assuming we go there at all!) is for an eaual number of male and
female astronauts to have sex (in the way in which south sea island
cocieties operated). If you select crews ostensibly on a "finger in
the air" basis you could get this right. As soon as you have a formal
evaluation proceedure you will have to admit this. You can't not with
all the fundamentalists around. It seems to be difficult enough to say
that Mars and the Earth are the same age (4.55e9 years).

- Ian Parker- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Didn't "Stranger in a Strange Land" (Heinlein) take as one premise
that the first manned Mars mission comes to grief over jealousy-
sparked homicide, leaving Michael Valentine Smith an orphan to be
raised by Martians? (Also IIRC: The next mission is described as
having been conducted by a "drone" ship, and the manned mission that
retrieves him is all-male.) It seems the ape mating game holds some
dangers even for space programs as they are now. Perhaps the eventual
workaround for long-duration mixed-gender team spaceflight will
involve suppressing astronaut sex drive pharmaceutically in ways that
provide compensatory mood-elevation benefits -- which probably would
not be difficult, since SSRI antidepressants go a long way in that
direction already, at least for the depressed. And you also satisfy
the Fundies that way. (Little as I like satisfying the Fundies,
they'll probably be around and making trouble for space programs two
decades hence.)

"Stranger in a Strange Land" predicted the waterbed and media-empire
megachurches, according to its Wikipedia entry. Maybe we could give
Heinlein partial credit for predicting this juicy bit of news as well?

Michael Turner wrote:
Didn't "Stranger in a Strange Land" (Heinlein) take as one premise
that the first manned Mars mission comes to grief over jealousy-
sparked homicide, leaving Michael Valentine Smith an orphan to be
raised by Martians? (Also IIRC: The next mission is described as
having been conducted by a "drone" ship, and the manned mission that
retrieves him is all-male.)


Back in the 1960's NASA took one look at their astronauts psychological
profiles (a lot of type A's) at the length of a Mars mission (around
three years) and a all-male crew, and came to the conclusion that both
violence and homosexuality would be the end result of that approach.
So that might be pretty much a non-starter. :-D

Pat

On 13 Feb, 14:00, Pat Flannery wrote:
Michael Turner wrote:
Didn't "Stranger in a Strange Land" (Heinlein) take as one premise
that the first manned Mars mission comes to grief over jealousy-
sparked homicide, leaving Michael Valentine Smith an orphan to be
raised by Martians? (Also IIRC: The next mission is described as
having been conducted by a "drone" ship, and the manned mission that
retrieves him is all-male.)

Back in the 1960's NASA took one look at their astronauts psychological
profiles (a lot of type A's) at the length of a Mars mission (around
three years) and a all-male crew, and came to the conclusion that both
violence and homosexuality would be the end result of that approach.
So that might be pretty much a non-starter. :-D

The Mars expedition will not be all male.

- Ian Parker

In article .com,
Michael Turner wrote:
Didn't "Stranger in a Strange Land" (Heinlein) take as one premise
that the first manned Mars mission comes to grief over jealousy-
sparked homicide, leaving Michael Valentine Smith an orphan to be
raised by Martians?

It was a bit more complicated than that -- evidently Heinlein's astronauts
didn't practice proper contraception, so the adulterous affair produced a
child, and I believe the mother died in childbirth (also not explained).
What happened to the rest of the crew was likewise unclear.

(Also IIRC: The next mission is described as
having been conducted by a "drone" ship...

With the note that another manned mission would probably have been sent
shortly, had not a war intervened.

and the manned mission that retrieves him is all-male.)

The issue was moot for the second expedition as finally sent, because it
used a magic space-drive that permitted a very short trip time.

Bear in mind that SiaSL is *fiction*. Heinlein needed a human raised by
Martians with no human contact at all, so he juggled the history to make
this sort of work.

It seems the ape mating game holds some
dangers even for space programs as they are now.

Oddly enough, the issue has not proved a big problem in Antarctica. This
suggests that the "dangers" are like the fears that Mercury astronauts
would be incapacitated by a few minutes in free fall -- speculative
superstition, almost completely unrelated to reality. The mistake is to
take the monsters under the bed seriously enough to go far out of your way
to avoid them (as Mercury was forced to do, because of some influential
kibitzers).
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