How Astronauts’ Experience Could Help Trapped Chilean Miners [Mines]

The trapped Chilean miners may face their most severe psychological challenges in a number of months’ time, if experience from space missions is anything to move by.

a up to date NASA study suggests rescuers have to be especially vigilant at the halfway stage of the project. It found that the morale of astronauts on the International Space Station declines in the course of the third quarters of their expeditions.

Jack Stuster of Anacapa Sciences in Santa Barbara, California, achieved a systematic analysis of diaries that were kept for this purpose by astronauts during their six-month ISS expeditions. Each of more than 4000 diary entries were categorised as positive, negative or neutral in tone.

Stuster found the strongest overall negative tone inside the third quarter of expeditions, a period that has also been said to electrify scientists on long stays within the Antarctic. Communications with management deteriorated inside the third quarter too, and the frequency of interpersonal problems rose by a fifth.

Ground support

Other studies have not found the third-quarter effect, however, and suggest that if appropriate measures are taken, the miners needn’t suffer from it. Earlier studies of psychological issues in space – on the Russian space station Mir within the 1990s ( Gravitational and Space Biology Bulletin, vol 14, p 35 ) and on the ISS ( Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine, vol 78, p 601 ) – found no evidence of a dip.

” We didn’t find that on Mir or the ISS, and it was mainly through great support the blokes got from the ground, both inside the US and Russia,” said Nick Kanas of the University of California, San Francisco, who helped lead the studies.

By using questionnaires to score the mood and behaviour of crews aboard Mir and the ISS, Kanas’s teams showed that constant and high-quality communication and support from the ground is fundamental to helping people handle long periods of physical isolation.

These and other studies show that maintaining communications, honesty and day-night cycles, and keeping the miners occupied, will probably be key within the four months it’s going to take to rescue them.

Keep in touch

” Probably the most main things a crew needs is to be supported from outside and have a goal,” says Jennifer Ngo-Anh, project manager of the eu Space Agency’s ongoing Mars500 experiment , through which six pretend astronauts are spending 500 days in isolation on a mock trip to the Red Planet.

Appointing a colleague as an intermediary on the skin – perhaps a mining foreman or manager – is usually important, as that person will already be trusted and respected by the boys underground. This has worked well in space exploration, with former astronauts and flight surgeons on the ground serving as first points of liaison with the crews.

It’s also vital to keep the miners’ families in close and regular touch with the boys underground, and to offer the miners with surprise calls and gifts, which on space missions have raised morale hugely.

Tell the truth

There is not any point in lying to the boys about how long it’s going to take to rescue them. ” If they don’t give some realistic expectation, the boys’s anxiety becomes acute, especially if nothing seems happening,” says Sheryl Bishop , a social psychologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, who specialises in human survival in extreme environments. Other psychologists contacted by New Scientist unanimously agreed.

” The neatest thing is to ensure those men believe they’re component to the entire decision-making and being kept truthfully inside the loop,” she says. Also, rescuers should beware of issuing promises they could’t meet, as these destroy morale. Estimates of escape time should err on the long side, to bypass dashing hopes of earlier rescue.

Night and day

Studies of astronauts ( Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine, vol 76, p B94 ) and scientists on long-term Antarctic expeditions ( The Lancet, vol 371, p 153 ) demonstrate the significant and damaging consequences of disrupting day-night cycles. Loss of sleep ends up in depression, lack of concentration and irritability.

Maintaining a daily sleep-wake cycle will provide the lads with milestones and a structure if you want to make the highly unusual experience seem more normal. ” Daylight” may very well be provided by sending the miners hundreds of light-emitting diodes, which can be bright and have very long lifetimes.

Keep busy and get organised

Astronauts have endless tasks and experiments to perform, which keep them constantly occupied – not so the miners. Will probably be vital to send down sources of entertainment, consisting of MP3 players, crosswords and reading matter to keep the lads occupied.

Even more valuable can be arrangements for the lads to adopt a pacesetter – some news reports suggest this has already happened – and to assign tasks to groups of fellows, giving them a sense that they’re contributing to the comfort effort themselves. This could increase their self-esteem and morale, and conquer boredom.

” There could, let’s say, be 10 guys in control of consumables, another 10 in command of doing away with waste, or monitoring information from the skin,” says Jason Kring , president of america Society for Human Performance in Extreme Environments, based in Orlando, Florida. ” It’s critical because it gives them all something valuable to do.”

Stuster even suggests that with an estimated 2 kilometres of tunnels at their disposal, some could possibly keep on prospecting.

New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the implications of human endeavour set inside the context of society and culture, providing comprehensive coverage of science and technology news.

Source

This post is tagged: astronauts, Chilean, experience, Mines, Trapped