vestibulo

Have you ever imagined how it would feel being weightless? Most people need to rely on their imagination to have a similar adventure or – go to space. But that’s not the only possibility to turn the world upside down! Currently the German Aerospace Center and the European Astronaut Center conduct a study, in which 12 participants stay in bed for 60 days. That might have an impact on your sense of gravity… 

a participants protocol 

„Das erste Mal hatte ich das Gefühl schweben zu können, als ich vom Training  kam. So ab dem 10 Tag in Bettruhe. Zuerst hatte ich es nur bei hellen Decken, dann überall – das Gefühl, dass ich schwerelos bin. Am liebsten fliege ich über Rohre, die sind ja so uneben. Und wenn ich in die große Halle fahre, wo die Decke ja mehrere Meter höher ist, habe ich das Gefühl, dass ich falle. Ich sage dann dem, der mich schiebt „Vorsicht, Stufe!“ Aber dann fällt mir ein, dass mir nichts passieren kann, weil ich ja schwebe und jemand der schwebt kann nicht fallen.

Zuerst wusste ich nicht, ob ich mir alles nur einbilde. Werde ich jetzt verrückt? Dann habe ich mit unserem Arzt gesprochen, der mir gesagt hat, dass das alles völlig normal wäre. Der Gleichgewichtssinn schaltet sich nach einer Weile einfach von selbst ab – und man nutzt nur noch seine Augen zur Wahrnehmung Dann ist eben oben gleich unten.

Ich habe keine Angst vor dem Schweben – ganz im Gegenteil, ich freue mich jedes Mal darauf. Es ist wie ein Abenteuer. Ich weiß ja, warum ich mich so fühle und kann es deshalb vielleicht genießen. Ich habe gehört, dass es nach dem Aufstehen nach 60 Tagen auch vorkommen kann, dass man nicht weiß, ob man sich selbst bewegt oder jemand anderes. Es ist eine ganz neue und spannende Erfahrung für mich und ich freue mich, dass ich sie haben kann.

Ich kann nur schweben, wenn ich mit dem Bett gefahren werde. Dann spüre ich selbst meinen Rücken, der auf der Matratze liegt, nicht mehr. Ich denke auch nicht mehr an meine Füße, da ich sie ja nicht brauche, wenn ich fliege. Es fühlt sich alles schwebend an. Ich habe früher immer den Traum gehabt, einmal ins Weltall zu fliegen um Schwerelosigkeit zu erleben. Jetzt ist es gar nicht mehr so stark, denn ich „weiß“ ja wie es sich anfühlt.

Aber, wenn ich mir vorstelle, nur noch in der Schwerelosigkeit leben zu müssen, dann würde ich den Boden unter den Füßen schon vermissen. Schwerkraft ist ja schon ziemlich praktisch.

In unserer Einrichtung gibt es auch ein Deckenfenster. Aber wenn ich dort entlangschwebe freue ich mich jedes Mal so sehr den Himmel zu sehen, dass ich selbst das Schweben vergesse.“

“The first time I felt weightless, just happened after my training. It was my 10th day in bed. First, I only had the sensation, when I passed over bright ceilings, but then I would experience it, every time someone would shift me from one place to another. My favorite sensation is, when I pass pipelines, which are settled in a lumpy way under the ceiling. Once I travel towards the big hall, which is much higher than the corridor, I have the impression of falling. I tell the person guiding me: “Pay attention to the steps!” But then I realize that nothing can happen to me, because I am weightless.

The first time I had the sensation of being weightless, I wasn’t sure if I will turn mad now. Our doctor assured me, that this is pretty normal, because my vestibular organ loses it orientation. Then, I only use my eyes for orientation. This could turn my world upside-down.

I am not afraid of being weightless – no: I really like it! It is an adventure. I know why I feel like that, which offers me a safe feeling to enjoy the journey in zero gravity. I’ve heard that the same effect can reappear after my bedrest phase. Some former participants could not distinguish between their own movements or the movements of other people. For me, the whole thing of being weightless is a new experience and I am thankful to have it.

I can only ‘fly’ when someone is moving me in my bed. Then I even don’t feel my back, which is settled on the mattress, anymore. I even don’t think about my feet anymore, because I don’t need them while flying. Everything is weightless. Years ago, I’ve always been dreaming of going to space one day to feel zero gravity. Today, I don’t think I have to there anymore – I’ve been there!

But, if I think about spending every day in zero gravity, I would decide to live on earth under normal conditions. I would miss touching the floor with my feet – and gravity has some practical benefits.

In our research department we also have a window at the ceiling. Every time I fly by, I am so happy to see the sky, that I even forget being weightless.”

 more about the RSL bedrest study:
https://davidrsl.wordpress.com/
https://paulrsl.wordpress.com/

and: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Bedrest_studies/60_days_and_60_nights_in_bed

more impressions: live at http://www.spaceup.nl/

A keynote from Kaunertal

„Ahhhh – your playing a mission to Mars on a glacier. How fun!” 

I think, I’ve heard that sentence at least every second time, I’ve been telling people about the analogue mission to Mars I would participate in. 

The purpose of AMADEE15 was to simulate a real trip to Mars within two weeks. We focused on testing spacesuits in several experimental conditions in order to evaluate their usage regarding EVAs on Mars. We analyzed the environment – a glacier – in order to understand how life in extreme environment can s urvive. We simulated a real time communication to Mars, learning about the difficulties of a ten minutes time delayed communication. The aim of our mission was to target as much as possible a real manned mission to Mars and to prepare future astronauts, using our experiences, for the biggest journey mankind ever has conducted. 

 

After finishing the mission, my personal result looks like this: We arranged really careful and precise, but there are two things we can’t prepare in advance. The first aspect addresses the radiation and the second – the psychological factors of human spaceflight. 

Let us focus on the last aspect – the psychological human being in space. 

team communication

“You never listen to me!” “You have no idea about what I feel!” “- We all know these kinds of sentences, having experienced similar situations in our relationships to friends or partners. Let us assume that we solve most of these conflicts by talking about them. We might share a meet up, start talking – and at some point we find a common base again. 

Now – let us imagine we are travelling on a spaceship to Mars and need to solve a conflict. On earth, or even during an analogue mission, it’s not such a big problem: people can meet, have a beer, talk it through and continue their work. But on Mars we have a time delayed communication of 

approximate ten minutes – which forces us to improve the communication to that point, that not only information regarding the operation will be transmitted, but also clearness about the psychological aspects.

But – in order to have an efficient emotional and operational communication, people need to adapt good communication skills and rules – to learn HOW to state their own aspects and thoughts. 

Therefore I suppose that a future mission to Mars must prepare in a way that communication skills and rules are trained within the entire team (includes astronauts, ground, scientist). Intense communication training will – of course – teach methods of sharing ideas and thoughts, but moreover increase the awareness for the fact that communication is a subtle and sensitive mechanism – which brings me to my next point.

awareness and introspection

Everyone being involved in a working process might have experienced moments when you are caught in your own work, forgetting about everything else surrounding you. 

Regarding space missions: we need to create more transparency and exchange in our team. That could have helped to zoom out of everyone’s frog perspective and capture the whole mission more from an outside view.

We were divided into several teams, such as Flight Planning, Science Support, Astronauts, Field and Ground Control. To my opinion, one of the biggest issues we have to work on is the question how we can increase the awareness for each teams work in order to decrease the potential number of misunderstandings between them.

I would have loved to invent the position of a runner in each team during a mission such as AMADEE15. That means: each day a team member switches to another team – just to observe the way they work: the questions they have to deal with, the targets they have etc. 

One of the astronauts described a possible situation on a real Mars mission using a funny quote: “The Science team wants me to bring the results, the Flight Plan team wants me to follow the schedule, the Media team expects an interview while collecting the results and being in time – but they all forget that I am carrying a heavy suit.” 

pre-selection process

I realized that people set a high focus on the astronaut selection – also from the psychological point of view, but less on the selection process of people working on the ground. 

In a real mission to Mars it is important to change that. Selection process should include pre-trainings for everyone participating in the mission. That would also increase the awareness of the entire work, not only of someone’s specific position. We should check for someone’s resources and motivation.

Brings us to our next point….

decrease of motivation

During missions, it happens that plans fail. Experiments have to be shifted due to outside conditions etc. Astronauts experience boredom while the feeling of the first excitement disappears. That can decrease the astronaut’s motivation and provoke bad working results and conflicts. 

I suggest facing this aspect from a preventive perspective. We need to be really aware about everyone’s internal motivation to participate in a mission, to check his resources and use them. Internal motivation cues can be really tiny and invisible but can have a huge impact on someone’s psychological status.

and the last one – can we fake reality?

I have a conclusion about the factor of simulating a mission as well: I think, even though we call it a simulation, we act within reality and therefore we can’t fake reality, because we actually never leave it. AMADEE15 ended his daily simulations around 3pm but I think it never ended and still goes on, including the discussions, the following thoughts. The only thing we can’t test yet is the factor of being far away from earth.

photos (c) AMADEE15 (Claudia Stix&Paul Santek)

faking reality - a glimpse into a virtual world

Imagine you can transit from your couch to a warm beach within seconds. And from there to the huge city packed with people. And from there to another planet! Sounds like Science Fiction? But it's not! Virtual Reality will make it possible for us to interchange virtually between different worlds.

Full Podcast available on: https://soundcloud.com/alex-sita/podcast-virtual-reality-ah


"Virtual reality is an artificial world, that helps us to imagine how another world or our own world could look like." (Anna Losiak)

"You can fake reality in a sense, that you can help prepare the actual thing. The point is - nothing will be equal to standing on Mars." (Kartik Kumar)

Virtual Reality on a Mars simulation/AMADEE15

"It's kind of like in a computer game, but in this case you are supposed to not only look at the screen, but have goggles on you, that allow you to move your head. This computer game is showing the real life, instead of a computer environment." (Anna Losiak)

"We use it, to train people in advance to go on an EVA. It's better if you can test it in advance without risking someones life." (Kartik Kumar)

discovering new worlds without leaving the spot

"There are technologies, that even go further than virtual reality to a thing called "augmented reality. And the idea behind augmented reality is that the reality that you see, is part real and part virtual." (Kartik Kumar)

"Even though this avatar is a 100% reflection of reality, you are of course missing some human interaction. The fact, that you maybe can not touch that person or if you do, the sensations are not maybe the same." (Kartik Kumar)

"I don't think it's an impossible thing anymore, it's just about time and effort." (Kartik Kumar)

Photos (c) OeWF 2015 (Claudia Stix)

//telephone to mars

Calling Mars? Not as easy as you've might imagined it. Sending a message to Mars takes about ten minutes to arrive - due to the distance. 

 

And of course, your answer from Mars will be ready after another ten minutes. That means - communication to Mars is a processed dialogue of at least 20 minutes.  

 

"You can't really say - oh what did you mean by that, because then you are already twenty minutes too late." (Joao Lousada/EarthCom AMADEE15 OeWF)

And - strict rules are needed in order to communicate clear and precisely. 

"One of the tricks we use, is  the hashtag# for keeping a certain conversation about the topic, unrelated to that topic. Like this it's clear."

 

Being used to direct and spontanous communication - a delayed conversation can have an impact on those who have to use it.

"There is always a balance you can find. Yes you should be accurate, you should be precise, but at the same point there is also room for a nice word, that the field know we are there to support them." 

"One way to increase a human factor is to use video messages. You can record yourself to have a human touch with."

 

(c) OeWF 2015 (Paul Stanek Fotografie)

Podcast on: https://soundcloud.com/oewf/amadee-15-podcast-01-mars-communications

searching for interview partners: life in transit (a tribute to Marc Augé)

How much time do you spend every day in consumption spaces? Places like train stations, airports, supermarkets and highways. Observing our society, the tendency to spend more and more time in transit spaces, grows. We commute to get to work, we travel, and we buy.

A book, which really inspired me, is “Non-places” by the french anthroposophist Marc Augé. He defines a “place” as a space with an identity, a history. In contrast to that, Augé describes these transit spaces as “non-places”. 

After reading his book, some years ago, I started digging into the field of spatial-theories. Augé already gives us many explanations about the changes of using spaces in our world. But there is one answer, I could not find in his book:

Which psychological impact do non-places have on us?

As books can’t offer me the answer, I want to find it by myself. Therefore I am searching people who live or have lived in transit. Do you spend a lot of time by commuting to job? Is the ICE your second home? Are you collecting flight miles? Is the airport your second home?

If you feel addressed, I would love you to leave me a message. The idea is to interview and portray some people and their thoughts concerning “non-places”. It can be everything – and therefore I am curious to listen to your stories. 

The interviews will be published on my blog www.embody-your-mind.blogspot.de

I am open to meet up at the train station or in a plane to have that conversation. ;)

healing the healthy ones

why we must focus on psychological prevention regarding future Mars missions

Have you ever read through an astronaut’s biography? If so, you might probably agree with the idea that most of them resemble fairy tales! Perfect CVs, qualifications, experiences, and in addition to that: extraordinary social skills. Someone who goes to space is a person to work hard, have discipline and on the other hand, the courage and the vision to fulfill its own dreams. Furthermore, astronauts are trained and taught in all kind of different aspects, starting from dentistry, repairing things, science, group communication skills and foreign languages.

We are dealing with people, who never experienced real boredom (because they always found something they were interested in). We are talking about people, who don’t know the feeling of being isolated or confined – not in a space simulation - but in reality. That could include the experience of being bullied or spending a long time in jail, not knowing when this situation might change. These people haven’t experienced sensory deprivation the way a person being internalized in hospital could talk about.

But if we think about long-term missions to Mars, this is what will happen to our astronauts: boredom and low workload during the flight, sensory deprivation due to an artificial environment and isolation. How does a person, who is born to be a pioneer, an explorer, deal with the basic feeling of having anything to do? And further, how can we teach these people in advance to deal with those difficulties, to establish methods to prevent themselves from psychological problems, such as occurring depression or fatigue.

Psychological prevention is likely a solution. But does that mean we need to receive therapy, before we even have an issue to work on? Go to the doctor, extract our soul and start overthinking our complete childhood without having a real reason for it?

In this case, we need to change our way of thinking concerning prevention. Maybe this example might help:

Imagine you are visiting a doctor in order to receive a check-up and he tells you that you will have to receive a medical treatment against cancer. Not because you have cancer, but as a preventive measure! Most probably, you would react embarrassed and refuse the treatment and from the medical point of view it makes sense not to take medicine you don’t really need.
 

Now, think about it the other way around: Ask yourself what you would do in order to remain healthy and decrease the risk to suffer from cancer. Maybe, if you follow a common healthy lifestyle, you would answer something like: sports, healthy food, not smoking – and it would seem completely normal to us.

Both situations deal with the same target – avoiding cancer – but completely different.

The first one has a negative focus, willing to eliminate the hypothetically existing disease, whereas the other one deals with it from a positive point of view: do something, so you won’t have it. I would call them negative and positive prevention.

And this is how we need to think about psychological prevention. Of course we can’t use therapy methods, we use for people who see us for problems the actually have. We need to create new concepts, focusing those, who might need some psychological strategies in the future, due to the jobs they are doing or the changes in life they are addressing.

treat the healthy ones

There is an environment which actually deals with prevention. People who train to be a psychotherapist have to go through the whole process by themselves in order to understand these methods. Obviously most people don’t have specific reasons to receive therapy in that context, but the curriculum includes it in the study process. We need to evolve a deeper understanding of ourselves in order to help others. Studying psychology and following a further education as a dance therapist, I experienced this kind of prevention therapy.

I describe what happened like this: Self-therapy did not treat or heal me, but it helped me to analyze every tiny detail of myself: my reactions, my fears, my emotions. Nowadays I walk through the world as happy as I’ve been before, but I can control myself easier, self-regulate my emotions and observe changes carefully.

This is the point in prevention therapy: you don’t have a specific goal or question which brings you there. Instead, you are a person, willing to learn. The result is, you will acquire many tools you can use in every second of your life. What helps you, when you are afraid? How can you share your thoughts to others? Where do you have limitations? How can you create your own flow?

create awareness

The first thing we need to create is awareness for the importance of prevention.

Of course it is hard for you to imagine suffering from depression, if you’ve never experienced that. But if you have witnessed someone else having it, you slightly get an idea about what it could be like. The most important thing is, to be aware of it.

I suppose that most astronauts know about the psychological aspects in space, but they are not aware of it. The reason is quite obvious: most of them never experienced psychological issues in their past.

Therefore it is important to create a learning space to help these people understand and learn about psychological aspects, which can become existential on a journey to Mars.

One method to increase the awareness for psychological needs is the usage of simulations. They offer the possibility to experience stressing factors such as confinement, upcoming group dynamics and isolation on earth. Examples are ESA caves http://blogs.esa.int/caves/ or the project Concordia http://blogs.esa.int/concordia/.

Simulations show two major positive aspects:

1.                  Upcoming astronauts can train and observe how they deal with different environments.

2.                  The participants have the time and possibility to invent coping strategies.

The question, and we can’t test that before, is: how do things change if the simulation becomes 

reality? So we need to establish strategies in advance.

develop self regulation

There is one problem about people who never had problems: they don’t know how to deal with it.

I’ve seen many people growing up in a perfect world, never experiencing a challenging situation. They learn to love and trust their environment, but once a problem occurs, they don’t know how to solve it. On the other hand, a person being raised with difficulties might be more cautious, but also more capable of dealing with problems.

The factor to determine, if someone can cope with challenging situations is called “resilience”. So far, no one is quite sure, where it comes from, but one thing to be sure about is, we can train people, to be resilient. Regarding a psychological prevention, this aspect should be viewed as one of the most important ones.

improve the system

Prevention can also have a positive impact regarding our health care system.

Think about it like this: we go to see a doctor at least once a year in order to have a check-up. I conclude that there should be check-ups like these for psychological needs as well. For most people it would be the same as the dentist’s check-up.

Nevertheless, if we integrate this aspect into our system, we would be more aware of it the whole time.

One thing which could clearly improve by focusing on prevention is the image we have about therapy. It is not about slicing through our childhood, and pouring out one’s soul to a psychologist, but about developing a strong and self-reflected personality. And this is what future astronauts on Mars really need.