Tranquilized in Space

When the first manned spaceship takes off for Mars, it may be followed through emptiness by radio beams, perhaps by television. Comforting words and familiar sights from the receding earth will be useful for keeping the crew on an even mental keel. Also useful will be the voice of a soothing space psychotherapist.

The crew, says Psychologist E. Jack Wilcox in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, will have been selected with meticulous care to exclude screamy or jittery types. But conditions on board will be so strange that even the best-ordered psyche is apt to break out with psychoses. There will be no gravitation, of course, so some of the men will be upside down, walking on the ceiling, like flies, with suction cups on their feet or brachiating from handhold to handhold like chimpanzees in a jungle. Subconscious physical habits learned in infancy will not work any more. The space voyagers will have to force their hands down as well as lift them up. If they try to sit, they may merely lift their legs and remain suspended.

Such conditions, says Dr. Wilcox, will make men feel strange, and will make it hard for them to perform the intricate jobs expected of them. Continual failures at simple physical tasks are sure to rouse frustrations. Emotional conflicts and irrational hatred will tear the crew into factions just when it should be working as smoothly as a perfectly tooled machine.

To ward off psychic crackups while traveling through space, Dr. Wilcox sugests a stream of homey news from earth, and televised views of moms and sweethearts. Where such therapy does not sufice, he believes that a therapist should keep in communication with the crew by microphone and loudspeaker. Ever-present and all-hearing, he will watch from disant earth for the first warning signs of a psychological storm-to-come. By the technique of group therapy he can smooth ruffled feelings and try to keep peace on the spaceship all the way to Mars.

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