Pa. Santy et Dr. Jones, AN OVERVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL ISSUES IN ASTRONAUT PSYCHOLOGICAL SELECTION, Aviation, space, and environmental medicine, 65(10), 1994, pp. 900-903
The NASA Johnson Space Center Medical Sciences Division convened an In
-House Working Group on Psychiatric and Psychological Selection of Ast
ronauts in 1988. Working with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the
National Space Development Agency (NASDA) of Japan, psychiatrists and
psychologists experienced in selecting individuals for training as ast
ronauts or analogous duties studied the development of appropriate cri
teria. Psychiatric criteria generally concern the detection of patholo
gical conditions, and thus ''select-out'' applicants by disqualificati
on. Psychological criteria may be used to identify specific affirmativ
e criteria that make an individual particularly well-qualified for suc
h duties, and thus concern ''select-in'' processes for operational cre
ws. As space missions grow longer, and as crews become larger and more
demographically diversified, the long-ignored questions, ''What sort
of healthy individuals should be selected for such missions,'' and ''H
ow do we know this?'' will become more critical to the success of spac
e exploration. The papers Included in this Panel concern the results o
f these investigations, and represent long-needed quantification of th
ese two selection processes, select-out and select-in, in several cult
ures.