Social and cultural issues during Shuttle/Mir space missions

A number of interpersonal issues relevant to manned space missions have bee n identified from the literature. These include crew tension, cohesion, lea dership, language and cultural factors, and displacement. Ground-based stud ies by others and us have clarified some of the parameters of these issues and have indicated ways in which they could be studied during actual space missions. In this paper, we summarize some of our findings related to socia l and cultural issues from a NASA-funded study conducted during several Shu ttle/Mir space missions. We used standardized mood and group climate measur es that were completed on a weekly basis by American and Russian crew and m ission control subjects who participated in these missions. Our results ind icated that American subjects reported more dissatisfaction with their inte rpersonal environment than their Russian counterparts, especially American astronauts. Mission control personnel were more dysphoric than crewmembers, but both groups were signficantly less dysphoric than other work groups on Earth. Countermeasures based on our findings are discussed which can be ap plied to future multicultural space missions. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.