Indentifying New Psychological Needs For the Next Generation Astronaut In Long Term Space Flight

Paper number

IAC-07-A1.I.01

Author

Mr. William Widjaja, International Space University (ISU), France

Year

2007

Abstract

Introduction: As we are leaving our cradle, humanity pushed to explore space further and longer. In the future, astronaut will travel further and longer to deep space. Their job will be more and more demanding than current astronaut, the stress and expectation of these astronauts will be overwhelming more demanding and complex. Thus as a result, mission design planner is faced a stronger challenge to design mission workload that will meet the psychological needs of these future astronauts. With Astronauts facing new challenges in their future missions, new generation studies will develop a different kind of psychological needs that is different from the current generation astronauts. Many of the leading generation social studies pointed out that technology and new social environment have pushed the youth to new different needs to fulfill their life.  In this paper, the main purpose of the research is to identify the next-generation astronaut psychological needs. The research will focus on new technological social environment that has evolved during the Internet Generation (Twenge, 2006) and its impact on the youth today. Future astronaut that will explore the Moon and Mars will fall into the age-range of the internet generation. These new generation have grown up in a extremely different environment than their predecessors. Although, there will be many essential psychological needs between the two generation of astronaut. Different generation of astronauts might carry different behavior and reaction to space flight environment. The purpose of the research is to identify the different psychological behavior of future astronaut in long-term space flight. 

Methodology:  The methodology of the research is to data mine from 2 fields of studies. 1 field of studies is to conduct literature research on existing and updated studies about culture and psychological studies in long-term space flight. Literature research paper by Nick Kanzas and Jack Struster discuss about the environment in long-term space flights. The other set is to conduct paper research on another field of studies in modern social psychology studies especially in field internet psychology and generation studies. In generation studies, we identify the different environment that different generation grows up in and what their environment could have an effect to their general behavior in their adult life. The effect of internet also plays an important role in the shaping a generation characteristic.. Upon completion of the two fields of studies, a cross-reference analysis will be conducted to find potential connection between the two fields of studies.  The cross analysis will generate the hypothesis of different psychological needs of next generation astronaut

Results:The cross analysis from 2 field of disciplinary will generate lists of different psychological needs of the next generation astronauts. 

Discussion:After listing these new psychological needs of next generation of astronaut, a discussion of possible futures studies will be discussed. Based on the list, generated from the exchange of two studies, various possible research methods will be proposed to help in proving the hypothesis. The studies will also open up new direction in the field of space psychological, behavior and performance studies.  

Abstract document

IAC-07-A1.I.01.pdf

Manuscript document

IAC-07-A1.I.01.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).

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