LIVING AND SURVIVING WITH ENEMIES: THE DYNAMICS OF INTIMACY IN LONG-DURATION MULTINATIONAL OUTER SPACE MISSIONS

 

LIKA RODIN^*

 

 

Summary

 

Outer space exploration is typically considered in the context of geopolitical militarized competition, a phenomenon known as the ‘space race’. Less attention has been given to partnership projects between the Soviet Union/Russia and the United States – the central space race antagonists – that had already begun in the 1970s with the short-term Soyuz/Apollo initiative and continued in the 1990s via collaboration around long-duration space missions. The current study focuses on the Russian-American Mir/Shuttle program (1994–1998). With the help of critical discourse analysis, I examine the experiences and representations of interpersonal interactions that emerged in the framework of the Mir/Shuttle program, looking at the ways in which dominant value systems, the materiality of organizational structures and the embodied sense of existential vulnerability might shape the space flyer’s perception of the objectives, realities and outcomes of this cross-national collaboration.

 

Key Words: Domination, Mir/Shuttle Program, vulnerability, othering, ideology.   

 

Introduction

 

In academic and public discussions, outer space exploration has been frequently considered in the context of geopolitical militarized competition, a  phenomenon known as the ‘space race’ (e.g. Brzezinski, 2007; Catbury, 2006; Cernan and Davis, 1999. Less attention has been given to the partnership projects between the Soviet Union/Russia and the United States – the central space race antagonists – that had already begun in the 1970s with the short-term Soyuz/Apollo initiative, followed by collaboration around missions to the Soviet/Russian low-orbit space station Mir in the late 1990s. Nowadays, the experiences and ‘lessons learned’ from these partnerships by national space agencies and space flyers are in high demand for the construction and operation of the International Space Station (ISS; Nied and Vorobiev, 1999) as well as for the general perspective of international political stability. While the plurality of technological insights, including the core module of Mir, were successfully employed in the ISS project, a number of questions around organizational and social-psychological aspects of long-duration multinational space missions still remain unanswered (Harris, 2009; Kanas, 2011; Kanas and Manzey, 2008). The existing body of research on collaborative long-term spaceflight is 1) relatively limited and 2) shaped by a specific paradigm. Two disciplines seem to dominate the analysis of cooperative space enterprise: behaviour sciences and history. Other academic fields – including law, international management, cultural studies and sociology – have been less salient on the topic in focus, while contributing to the examination of other extraterrestrial activities and phenomena.^[1]

Behaviour disciplines (i.e. classical applied psychology) are primarily concerned with the individual cognition of space flyers and the micro-level in-flight social interactions in regard to behavioural health and productivity. The focus is on the analysis of risk factors (both environmental and mental) and on the development of effective risk management techniques that are capable of securing the crew’s work performance (Kanas and Manzey, 2008; Kanas et al., 2000; Kanas et al., 2001; Kanas et al., 2006; Morphew, 2001; Palinkas, 2001; Sandal et al., 2007). Group heterogeneous composition is considered to be among the possible stressors that must already be addressed at the pre-flight stage in terms of acquisition of language and cultural knowledge and by joint training of the crew (Harrison, 2001; Suedfeld, Wilk and Cassel, 2011; Draguns and Harrison, 2011). Mezzo-level analysis frequently remains narrowly addressed by space psychology and is predominately framed by the essentialist concept of organizational culture (Harrison, 2001). Historical studies open up to the micro-macro perspective by looking at the ways in which national ideology and political conditions might shape experiences of individuals engaged in the space enterprise (Gerovich, 2011, 2014; Morgan, 2013). The knowledge accumulated through US-based historical studies have helped to deconstruct ‘Soviet space mythology’ (Gerovich, 2015) and to account for its negative effects. Although these critical studies produced a relatively detailed and coherent picture of the Russian political context and ideology, they rendered invisible the American perspective. The one-sided representation and language of political dichotomy is present in British space research as well, viewing international outer space projects as merely acts of ‘political propaganda’ emanating from the Russian side (Hall, Shayler and Bert, 2005, p. 216).

The purpose of this study is to make discernible and examine the particular value systems manifested during the Mir/Shuttle collaboration program (1994–1998), a project that allowed the accommodation of experienced American flyers aboard the Russian orbital complex Mir for 4-5 months as well as the participation of Russian cosmonauts in Shuttle flights. The study seeks a better understanding of why this partnership, despite its many obstacles, became possible. An autobiography of Jerry Linenger, an astronaut who served on the Mir during its most challenging period, is subjected to critical discourse analysis. In this regard, I analyse the experiences and representations of interpersonal interactions that emerged in the framework of the Mir/Shuttle program, looking at factors that might shape the flyer’s perception of the objectives, realities and outcomes of the cross-national collaboration. The paper consists of five parts. I will briefly present the history and scope of the Mir/Shuttle program, followed by a theoretical and methodological framework of the study. After that, the results of the analysis will be presented and discussed.

 

Mir/Shuttle Program

 

Already in early 1960s Russian and American governments launched attempts of cross-national collaboration, which progressively led to the short-term Soyuz-Apollo program in 1975 and eventually, in 1993, to a Joint Statement on Cooperation in Space, widening the framework for staff exchange and coordinated Russian-American space missions. In particular, it was agreed that the Russian space station Mir would be visited by American astronauts, which required ten dockings of the American Shuttle with the orbital complex. The central goal was to consolidate knowledge and technological innovations for the already planned project at that time – the International Space Station [National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 2013a]. Specifically, the American side hoped to benefit from the Russian experience with long-duration space missions. Moreover, a workable methodology of international cooperation was needed (NASA 2013b), even though both Russians and Americans were already used to launching international crews.^[2] Between 1994 and 1998, seven American astronauts (a scientist, engineers and a pilot) underwent extensive training in Star City, Russia, and were hosted aboard Mir for a period of 4-5 months each. At the same time, a NASA specialist team and a spacecraft communicator (CAPCOM) were accommodated at the Mission Control Centre near Moscow to engage in regular contact with the American crew members. The majority of the astronauts were brought to the space station and taken back to Earth on the Space Shuttle.

The modular space station Mir started low-orbit operation in 1986, and for nearly 15 years was almost continuously inhabited by national and international crews (Energia, n.d.). It consisted of six units, including a core operational module, supplementary models, laboratories and two docking ports. Space flyers and cargo (e.g. water, food resupply, scientific equipment) were delivered to the station by Russian and American space vehicles. Water recovery and oxygen regeneration systems installed on board helped in sustaining a liveable habitat. During the Mir/Shuttle program, the orbital complex, initially planned for an up to 5-year period of operation, started to age. At some point, technical failures followed one after another, sparking hot debates in the United States about the safety and feasibility of the American presence on Mir (Freeman, 2000). Jerry Linenger was one of two astronauts (increments 4 and 5) who witnessed the most challenging times in the history of the orbital complex. He arrived on Mir in January 1997 with the STS-81 Shuttle flight and became a member of the 22nd Mir mission crew (along with Russian cosmonauts Valeri Korzun and Alexander Kaleri); later on, Korzun and Kaleri were relieved by the Mir-23 crew (Vasily Tsibliev and Aleksandr Lazutkin), with whom Linenger continued to the end of his assignment in May 1997 (HSF NASA, 2013).

Large-scale technological troubles on Mir started in late winter 1997. In February, a fire incident erupted on the station due to an oxygen canister malfunction. The fire lasted 10 minutes and generated thick smoke, which forced the crew to wear full-face masks for several hours until the atmosphere within the station was normalized by conditioners. In March, a crash nearly occurred with the resupply ship Progress-M 33, an event that caused distress amongst crew members and complicated their relationships with the ground mission control. On top of that, a series of life support system failures impacted basic parameters of living conditions in the space capsule, including a malfunction of the cooling system. During the next increment (Mike Foale), in June, Progress-M 34 hit one of the models during the exercise of manual docking, damaging a solar panel, provoking decompression and putting the station in a spin. In their attempt to isolate the damaged module, the crew had to cut electric cables that resulted in power loss (Harland, 2005). Troubles and technical failures continued for several months, but eventually, the operational condition of the station was mainly restored; in fact, for the last American increment (Andy Thomas), it turned out to be an almost relaxed experience (Freeman, 2000).

 

The Notion of Intimacy

 

The notion of intimacy is employed in this study to explain space flyers’ relationships during a long-term space mission. An overall context of confinement and shortage of private space in a space capsule creates a particular regime of proximity and exposure that might lead to specific psychosocial effects (Harrison, Clearwater and McKay, 1991). Within the Western academic tradition, intimacy has been frequently described as emotionally laden attachments and exchanges among individuals considering themselves to be friends, spouses or partners (Chambers, 2013; Forstie, 2017; Henriksson, 2014; Ketokivi, 2010). In the historical perspective, the context and content of those relationships have transformed over time due to societal processes of democratization, modernization, technologization, individualization, and flexibilization (Chambers, 2013). More loose social contacts have increasingly been included in the notion of intimate ties (Forstie, 2017; Scheff, 1997). Individuals’ sovereignty, preferences and well-being have all become especially salient (Chambers, 2013). This development has demanded that additional attention be paid to social rules shaping intimate interactions, to their rationality, dynamics and the factor of mutuality (Forstie, 2017).

While typically employed in the examination of dyadic and ‘warm’ relationships, the idea of intimacy might be applied to collectives as well, taking the form of ‘cold’ interactions or social solidarity (Forstie, 2017; Scheff, 1997). Theoretical research on collective intimacy dates back to the classical age of sociology that provided initial insights on mechanisms of social cohesion and alienation in Western industrial societies (Scheff, 1997; Ketokivi, 2010). Contemporary scholarship continues this tradition, trying to link macro- and micro- social phenomena. Thus, Scheff (1997) analysed family interactions by looking at the way in which particular practices of parenting might inform group solidarity. Imbalanced family ties (too weak or too strong) risk the creation of a state of alienation of family members, typically children. While both elements of segregation and belonging are characteristic of any given small group, ensuring its internal dynamics, a pronounced prevalence of one over the other produces a state of dysfunctionality. Equilibrium of solidarity and alienation can be assessed in an examination of public and private narratives by counting a ratio of the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘We’. The underlying idea is that discourses may exhibit a certain type of ‘social figuration’, characterized by ‘independence (lack of cooperativeness because of too much social distance), interdependence (a balance between self and others that allows for effective cooperation) and dependence (lack of cooperativeness because of too little social distance)’ (ibid., p. 102). The two extremes of this spectrum – self-directedness and excessive loyalty – are denied a direct association with solidarity, as conditions undermining either collective integration or individual boundaries.

Social ties are therefore defined through ‘mutual identification’ and ‘understanding’: to become secure, social relationships require ‘that the individuals involved identify with and understand each other, rather than misunderstand or reject each other’ (ibid., p. 76). Secure social ties ensure reliable conduct and a feeling of pride, while alienation leads to altered behaviour and a feeling of shame. Social disintegration accompanied by a suppressed shame can give rise to isolation as well as interpersonal and societal conflicts, including large-scale militarized clashes between countries. The issue of power asymmetry is increasingly recognized and taken up in the social analysis of intimacy. Scheff (1997) suggested that shame should be considered a tool of control and discipline. Moreover, emotional states of vulnerable social and political actors can be pragmatically used by more powerful ones to spark conflicts.

 

Study Methodology

 

The study employs critical discourse analysis to examine the experiences and representations of intimacy in American astronaut Jerry Linenger’s autobiography Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir, published in 2000. While the majority of the astronaut corps engaged in the Mir/Shuttle project took part in a historical interview project (https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/) conducted by NASA in late 1990s, Linenger released a separate edition in which he presented a detailed account of his participation in the program. The book was well-received by Western readers, and the author built further success by delivering a series of public lectures in the framework of the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) non-profit educational program (Linenger, 2011, 2014).

Critical discourse analysis acknowledges the importance of written and spoken language in the reproduction and legitimation of an unequal distribution of social-political, cultural and economic power (van Dijk, 1993). More precisely, the approach attempts to establish ‘what structures, strategies or other properties of text, talk, verbal interaction or communicative events play a role in these modes of reproduction’ (ibid., p. 250). Of central importance is a recognition of the relationships between structures and individual practices as being mediated by processes and phenomena of social cognition. Individual attitudes and beliefs are considered to be derivative of more abstract value orientations (ideologies) and the related schemes of classification corresponding to the interests of the rule. Ideologies then are seen ‘as the fundamental cognitive ‘programmes’ or ‘operating systems’ that organize and monitor the more specific social attitudes of groups and their members’ (ibid., p. 258). Recognizing the overreaching role of value orientations and language in the production and operation of cognitive schemes, critical discourse analysis refuses to subscribe to the traditional positivistic affirmation of value-free knowledge. Critical accounts do not claim to provide a ‘true’ or ‘objective’ picture of social reality, but aim at uncovering power relationships and contributing to change.

A public speech (oral or written) is a discursive act that can reinforce or, in some cases, challenge the dominant representations. Various approaches can be used to influence the audience’s cognitive models. van Dijk systematized strategies and techniques of reproduction of domination in his analysis of political rhetoric. This included justification/legitimation and denial of dominance, general estrangement of the subjugated groups, specific tropes of argumentation, particular rhetoric, lexical stylization, storytelling, employment of various structural elements and quoting ‘credible witnesses’ (ibid., p. 264).

As a first step of the current analysis, the text of Linenger’s book was coded and thematised in regard to the issue of intimacy-alienation. These procedures helped to identify cognitive matrixes that shaped the astronaut’s experiences with the Mir/Shuttle program. After that, structural and rhetorical features of the narration were examined with a focus on the discursive construction of particular identities and events. 

 

Intimacy in the Mir/Shuttle Program: A Research Conversation

 

The book Off the Planet consists of three parts that reflect, in chronological order, the different stages of the author’s space mission: preparation, the flight (4^th increment) and re-adaptation back on Earth. The in-flight descriptions dominate in terms of emotional intensity and length of presentation. Two themes were identified as a result of open coding: cultural-political dichotomy and shared vulnerability. An analytical presentation of those themes follows below. The main argument of the analysis is that experiences of shared existential vulnerability and confinement, as well as the pressure of organizational demands, pulled the American astronaut into intimate relationships with the Russian space flyers on Mir. The social bonds that emerged, however, had a situational character. Linenger’s sense of solidarity with the Russian crew members turned out to be mediated by the ideology of Western domination and by professional norms. The situational state of interdependency among the crew members enabled their survival in critical conditions and planted the seed for a positive perception of further cross-national interactions.

 

Cultural-political dichotomy

 

Imagine living on a couple of school buses with two strangers for five months. The school buses are not traveling down a familiar road, but are flying through space at twenty-five times the speed of sound...They are old and in constant need of repair, smell like a musty cellar, and are filled with the irritating noise of valves opening and closing and of fans constantly whirring…The strangers talk only Russian. No English. They know nothing about the New Yorkers or Babe Ruth. Small talk is limited, and the phone is, more often than not, broken (Linenger, 2000, p. 128).

This presentation of the material-psychological condition on the Mir space station, provided in the middle part of Linenger’s book, outlines the overall impression of his participation in the Mir/Shuttle program. Estrangement, frustration over the unfamiliar and lack of comfort (physical and psychological) are apparent in the quote. The station is described in terms of outdated technological simplicity (the metaphor of school buses), low efficiency (old, in need of repair) and limited ergonomic suitability (constant noise). Crew members (Russian cosmonauts) are cultural aliens difficult to communicate with, and the possibilities of escaping from this unwelcoming world are restricted. This imagery, complemented by a mixture of fear and disgrace, shapes the dynamic of narration throughout the entire book.

Linenger arrived in Russia in January 1995, accompanied by his pregnant wife, to join a training program in Star City as part of the preparation for his mission to Mir. Russia appeared to the astronaut as being a frightening, untidy, backward, ill-managed, irrational, criminalized, poor and pass-dependent country. Several mini-stories incorporated into the first chapters of the book serve to broadcast the author’s distrust and fear of political abuse in Russia, starting from the very moment of his landing at the airport in Moscow:

Peering down the line, I saw Russian soldiers holding machine guns at the customs booth. The soldiers were dressed in green-gray uniforms with big black showboots pulled to the knee. The drab uniforms were adorned with the insignia of communism: red star, hammer, and sickle. It seemed that the military was not so fond of the new world order and decided to defiantly hold out against adopting the new Russian tricolor, white, and blue flag and the double eagle shield of freedom. With my U.S. armed forces identification card tucked in my pocket, I felt as if I were standing in line for execution (Linenger, 2000, p. 30).

Considered in the context of geopolitical confrontation, the formidable view of guards at the customs desk represented for Linenger the toughness and arbitrary nature of Russian power. The astronaut felt especially vulnerable being marked as a military man and as a representative of a country-opponent. The presence of the socialist-time symbolism in the guards’ new uniform signalled to him pass-dependency of the current political order in Russia from the former repressive regime. Presented in the form of storytelling, the episode provides a detailed account of a ‘negative event’ producing effects of emotionality and personal witnessing (Van Dijk, 1993, p. 264). The abuse, however, took an economic form: the customs officer demanded extra payment, claiming that the visa stamp did not fit properly in the passport frame. Moreover, Linenger’s luggage was lost and returned later on for an additional payment. In this way, a new market-generated reality manifested its harshness to the space flyer. The transitory stage in which the astronaut found Russia in the mid-1990s easily caused a confusion in attribution logic: social and organizational problems were frequently interpreted by the newcomer with a reference to the former command-control order while overlooking the role of political-economic deregulation.  

 

Values and alienation

 

In a similar manner, Linenger reflects upon a shortage of information in the national in international press about technical issues on Mir during his increment. The astronaut finds the explanation in the Soviet-time closeness and censorship that, in the past, was thought to protect the international image of the socialist order. ‘Space Station Mir’, concludes the author, ‘is all that remains of the “crowning glory of communism” – the Russian space program. Trips to the station, now almost entirely financed by other countries, provide the hard cash necessary for Russia to try to keep its space program going. Failures do not sell well’ (Linenger, 2000, p. 174). Censorship and manipulation of information can no longer be fully explained by the particularities of socialism as a political order, but have economic roots associated with the market-driven regime of global competition. In this context, the typical label of ‘Soviet propaganda’ might be easily replaced by an expression from marketing vocabulary. 

An alert sensitivity and constant expectation of power abuse are characteristic of the book narration. Linenger reports feeling almost offended by the hygiene regime on the Mir space station. Flyers had to wear clothes for two weeks without change and there was no shower on board. The astronaut interpreted these conditions, in line with dirty public toilets at Star City, as the state abuse on citizens’ ‘hygiene superego’ (Cavanaugh in Wilson, 2016). However, the same approach to hygiene is currently established on ISS as meeting the pragmatic requirements of the station’s self-efficiency. Thus, the astronaut’s cultural shock was caused not just by the reality of Russia, but by a new context of long-duration missions less familiar to American space explorers (NASA, 2013b).

The book author expresses a deep distancing from the order of life in Russia as well as from the Russians themselves. Ordinary people, including inhabitants of Star City, appear in the first chapters of the book to be a homogeneous mass, without any specific names or personalities being described. They are presented as embittered and restricted by economic poverty, dependent, ambivalent in their attitudes, compliant to authorities and profoundly culturally distant. Their life is simple, focused on the basic task of survival, at times irrational, debilitating and separated from technological innovations. The Russian authorities are portrayed in the book as potentially brutal, corrupted, highly bureaucratized, inefficient and self-serving.

The major source of frustration for Linenger in this context turned out to be the obvious disinterest of NASA representatives in putting pressure on the Russian partners and ensuring their compliance with program agreements. The author suggests that the Mir/Shuttle program was more a political than scientific or economic enterprise, as funds allocated for the space cooperation played a role in ‘foreign aid to Russia’ (Linenger, 2000, p. 36). In this way, the geopolitical paternalism of the American political establishment was said to undermine the astronauts’ perspectives for decent work in the foreign country. NASA was seen as betraying its own employees who were left on their own to face the harsh Russian reality. At some point, Linenger expressed alienation not only from the inhabitants and authorities of Star City, but from his own organization as well: ‘No one, not even our guys, seemed to want to make our training or living conditions any better’ (ibid., p. 34, original emphasis). The author refers to both national and professional solidarity operating with the ‘us/them’ dichotomy logic. He experiences exclusion from the ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 2006) of entitled American citizens and professional space explorers.

 

Discourse of dominance

 

The discourse of dominance that surfaced in the above-presented argumentation takes three forms in the book’s narration: a) stress on Russia’s economic dependency and the related American paternalism, b) ‘othering’ of Russians and life in Russia, and c) denial of dominance. 

a)Russia’s economic dependency

Linenger senses the economic decline of the Russian system everywhere: in poor and old-fashioned living facilities, in the 1960s-style agented buildings and equipment of the training centre, in the faces of instructors looking ‘as if they had been teaching the subjects since the time of Yuri Gagarin’ (ibid., p. 40), and even in the condition of the Mir space station itself. The orbital complex appeared to the astronaut seasoned and archaic; characteristic is Linenger’s emphasis on the smell reminding him of ‘the smell of Great Grandma’s basement’ or ‘an old wine cellar – musty and mushroomy’ (ibid., p. 83). Mir was also found to be stuffed with different personal and work-related items that had not been removed from it for years. The poor condition signalled to the book author the state of abandonment and scarcity of resources that Mir crews were subjected to. This image of the battered and mostly disabled space station is in sharp contrast to the author’s view of the American Shuttle, ‘the most incredible spacecraft ever built by mankind’ (ibid., p. 251). Namely, the Shuttle (and not the Russian space agency) is shown to be capable of reanimating Mir after a series of technical failures, as presented in the below-cited description of a docking phase. This profound difference and assistance efforts mark for Linenger not just the relationship between the two spacecraft but between the two countries as well. 

Life on Mir changed dramatically during the docking phase. The time represented a welcomed aberration from the daily grind. To begin with, the master alarm on Mir remained, for the most part, silent. Not because Mir had made a miraculous recovery, but rather because most of the life support systems were shut off. The air for the combined volume of shuttle and Mir was conditioned entirely by shuttle systems. The shuttle also supplied the oxygen and pressure to the complex; in fact, the pressure was pumped-up during the docked phase in order to boost the Mir reserves…Mir had become an appendage of the shuttle. (ibid., p. 214)

The life support system is the main means of sustaining space flyer existence. The American space vehicle, according to Linenger, not only temporarily took over the function of maintaining life on Mir, but it also provided possibilities for its enhancement. The docking scene functions as yet another representation of direct assistance to the Russian space program that establishes paternalistic (uneven and dependency-marked) relationships­ between the provider and the recipient. A particular lexical style comprising usage of evaluative words and constant comparison legitimizes the power asymmetry (van Dijk, 1993).

The geopolitical power misbalance manifests itself in Linenger’s experiences with the training program provided in Star City. The astronaut reports on construction and enhancement of enclaves of Western-like conditions and develops a messianic discourse. From the very beginning, Linenger attempted pushing program management on the issue of decent housing for the American astronauts. As a result of his efforts, a luxury (from the Russian perspective) apartment complex was constructed. The book author, however, expresses uncomfortable feelings due to a profound difference of the astronauts’ living conditions and lifestyle from that of the rest of the Star City inhabitants. This material gap complicated interpersonal relationships with the local community and even caused an open revolt. One of the American apartments was eventually ‘ransacked’: some of the belongings were stolen, others vandalized. ‘They wanted not only goods; they wanted Americans out,’ concludes Linenger. ‘Unfortunately, many Russians were not enamoured with the idea of cooperating with the Americans living in Star City while they were crammed into one-bedroom apartments’ (ibid., p. 36). 

A separate toilet for foreigners at the Star City training centre became another enclave of ‘Western civilization’. Linenger found bathroom facilities to be unpleasant in Russia. Therefore, he discovered and visited exclusively a special toilet supposedly arranged for by preceding guest space flyers: ‘French cosmonaut trainees of years past must have demanded a civilized commode’ (ibid., p. 39). The book author constructs yet another ‘imagined community’ (Andreson, 2006) of Westerners as cultured and modern in contrast to local ‘barbarians’.

Apart from creating exclusionary material conditions for the American program participants, the astronaut attempted to initiate changes in the teaching approach at the training centre in the name of his own interests, the interests of next-in-line compatriots and even for the interests of Russian cosmonauts. This messianic discourse, combined with practices of appropriation of foreign territory and establishing one’s own lifestyle, evoke a direct association with the history of colonization.

b) ‘Othering’

Russia and its citizens appeared to the book author as aliens who did not fit the ideals of modern life. This impression is supported by references to other ‘credible witnesses’ (van Dijk, 1993), such as French astronauts in the case of the foreign toilet story and the astronaut’s compatriots. Thus, the incident at the customs desk at Moscow airport motivated Linenger to file an official complaint. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued a related letter of protest, ‘suggesting that if the Russians want to join the civilized world, then they had better start acting as such in their dealing with Western guests in their country’ (ibid., p. 31). This formulation, as in a number of others presented above, employs a specific rhetorical strategy termed by Fabian (2002, p. 31) a ‘denial of coevalness’. The strategy produces a hierarchy of cultures, separating culturally distinctive groups in terms of time and assigning labels of pre-modern/uncivilized/passive and modern/civilized/active. This manipulation helps in justifying a master narrative of domination.

Denial of coevalness is apparent in Linenger’s descriptions of conditions in Russia: everything is underdeveloped, outdated, insufficient and in decline. Time in this argumentation is assumed to be a ‘chronological time’ (Fabian, 2002), demarcating stages in development and separating one generation from another. The astronaut, for example, claims that Russian technology ‘needs to move into the 1980s or 1970s before seriously pushing the limits in the new millennium’ (Linenger, 2000, pp. 29–30). Those stages are assumed to have already been left behind long ago by the Western engineering science that is currently capable of pushing new, challenging frontiers. References to the previous century, words such as ‘ancient’ and the metaphor of ‘Great Grandma’s basement’ are employed to create a separation of the Russian reality from the contemporary Western world. The construction of the (underdeveloped, passive and uncivilized) ‘other’ is crucial since it secures the reproduction of one’s own superiority (Said, 2003).

c) Denial of domination

Yet another strategy of domination is its denial (see also van Dijk, 1993). The book author states that the false bottom of the Mir/Shuttle international agreement hit hard the astronauts participating in the program, impacting their material conditions, their status and sense of security. Feeling subjected to arbitrary treatment in Russia and neglected by NASA representatives, Linenger perceived himself as a victim of the situation. With time, and not without special diplomatic efforts, Linenger’s family, however, managed to establish contacts with the local residents of Star City. The astronaut reported that cultural stereotypes had become problematized from both sides, a development that opened up possibilities for mutual recognition and exchange. Yet the Russians still remained strangers, whose general similarity underplays the particularities of individual characteristics (Said, 2003): ‘I found that the Russians were not much different than us. They cared about family, friends, and a peaceful existence, much as we did’ (Linenger, 2000, p. 37).

To summarize this part, the language of alienation characterizes Linenger’s representations of his initial engagement with the Mir/Shuttle program. Discursive and material divisions are apparent between American and Russian realms. Russians appear as cultural strangers, underdeveloped, stuck in the past and demoralized by ongoing economic restructuring. Another line of division cut through the professional domain: space flyers, as a group, turned out to be opposed to institutional and political authorities pursuing controversial goals at the expense of the astronauts’ well-being. With this cognitive model, Linenger starts his journey on Mir. This model, based on binary thinking, mediates the dynamics of his relationships with crew members aboard the orbital complex as well as his post-flight reflections.

 

Shared vulnerability

 

Spaceflight is a risky enterprise. The embodied feeling of danger adds an existential dimension to the aloofness of the humans’ daily operation. As an illustration, Linenger recalls a situation when the electric power failed and fans stopped working. In the emerging salience, ‘the hull came alive – groaning, popping, squeaking – battling in an effort to maintain its integrity. The erratic sounds were routine remembers of Mir’s vulnerability and, therefore our own’ (ibid., p. 184). This ever-present, shared sense of exposedness to environmental hazards elevated at times of technological disaster. 

Upon Linenger’s arrival to Mir, his interactional circles became limited to the group of Russian cosmonauts serving there; this condition in turn helped to deepen his relationships with the Russians. Moreover, the astronaut recognized the importance of his integration into the crew for mission success and developed a form of self-discipline. Crew members are presented in the book with personal names, status and detailed personality descriptions. The Russians are no longer seen as an unspecified mass, but as concrete individuals with particular traits and personal stories. In times of crisis, solidarity bonds between crew members are strengthened by the shared sense of vulnerability and the need for reliance on one another for basic survival. However, the emerged interdependency of the astronaut with the Russian crew members has a rather situational character. It is quickly weakened when the challenge subsides, being mediated by a specific master narrative. Chapters 12, 13 and 20 of the book are devoted to the description of crisis periods caused by technical failures on Mir. The dynamics of intimacy in these chapters were assessed on the basis of the I/We pronoun ratio suggested by Scheff (1977) (see Table 1).

Table 1. The dynamics of intimacy in times of crisis on Mir

 

 

During the fire incident (Chapter 12), the I/We proportion is marked by the dominance of personal orientation (r = 4.1).  The astronaut’s focus is on the description of the situational hazards and his attempts to navigate within the aggressive environment. According to Scheff (1997), this type of narration should be considered as topic-oriented and not addressing directly the relationships between the participants of the social setting. Characteristically, however, it is a correlation of the ‘I’ pronoun usage with the author’s assessments of the current state of affairs (‘I am alive’), and the ‘We’ pronoun with the view on further development of the situation (‘We will get this fire out, we will survive’, original emphasis, Linenger, 2000, p. 104). Solidarization culminates in a hygiene procedure aimed at counteracting the potential negative effects of smoke:

Everyone removed his smoke-contaminated clothing and washed down from head to toe. Consequently, the scene onboard Mir a few hours after the fire was almost laughable: six floating men, scrubbing away, all naked but for a filter mask over their faces. (ibid., p. 109)

The spectator’s almost erotic gaze captures exposed bodies of crew members as a sign of inter-corporeal connectivity that arose in the course of firefighting (touches, hugs, attentiveness to one another and signs of liveability). Individual egos (faces) are, however, preserved from the exposedness, maintaining social boundaries between the crewmates.

The next chapter (13) is almost entirely devoted to the reflections upon the fire incident. Here, the I/We ratio has changed dramatically towards an emphasis on the collective (r = 0.4). This is especially important since the narration unfolds around emotions and relationships actualized during the crises and right after it. Crew solidarity arose on the shared engagement in a specific situation and, moreover, on the common antagonism to the ground-based mission management. The ground mission controllers and political authorities are blamed for subjecting the spacemen to existential threats and moral dilemmas, as well as for ‘scapegoating’ the cosmonauts in an attempt to protect the reputation of technological solutions. Linenger connects the authorities’ disinterest in the well-being of the crew to the overall geopolitical nature of the space program. In response, the space flyers start filtering information provided to the ground and back each other up in the face of controlling power.

The strengthened crew solidarity manifested itself in shared judgments and commitments as well as in readiness for self-sacrifice. A continuity of individual existence is now associated with collective efforts and mutual support. This type of solidarity seems to be rather common for dangerous and demanding professions. For example, studying relationships among officers serving at a detention centre, Hall (2012) demonstrated that solidarity is about counting on colleagues in times of crisis.

Chapter 20 addresses yet another technical failure that caused leaking of ethylene glycol from a cooling system. The crew was worried about the possible health impact of the chemicals, but received neither sufficient information nor support from the ground controllers on this matter. Linenger reported that, at some point, the division between space flyers and ground mission controllers became profound:

It was, in a sense, us against them. We would follow their instructions ­­– this was not a mutiny by any means – but we would always question their intentions. An untoward effect of the ground’s dishonesty was a strengthening of the bonds within the crew. We became even closer… (ibid., p. 201)

In this way, the shared embodied experience of power abuse strengthened camaraderie. Hardt and Negri (2000), in their study of social mobilization, recognized the role of corporeal dimension in oppression and counter-behaviour. The subjugated can unite as lived bodies to create a domain of experience that escapes power command. As a result of in-group dynamics, a state of interdependency had emerged on Mir. The space flyers now fully relied on and supported each other.  

Tensions with the ground crew are a classic theme in the reports on space missions (Kanas and Manzey, 2008). In Linenger’s book, the conflict is highlighted structurally and lexically: one of the book chapters is titled ‘Cosmonauts, Da! Mission control, Nyet!’ (‘Cosmonauts, Yes! Mission control, No!’), combining Russian and English. Even the book cover contains a reference to the in-flight solidarity, as the author presents himself as ‘U.S. Astronaut/Mir cosmonaut’. And indeed, at some point, Linenger fully identified himself with the crew, in opposition to mission control:

While they were sitting smug and comfortable in their armchairs getting second- and third-hand information, we cosmonauts were facing real danger and try to get the job done. (Linenger, 2000, p. 127, emphasis added).

The negative and generalizing label ‘Russians’ is, from that point on, now increasingly applied to the mission management, while crew members appear as companions, concrete individuals with specific psychological characteristics and emotional dynamics.

Avoiding an open revolt that would not fit the established professional norms, the group, as presented in the book, developed an internal point of reference to manage the threatening situation. In this context, the employment of the ‘I’ and ‘We’ pronouns came almost to the state of balance (r = 1.1), reflecting the astronaut’s attempts not to separate himself from the rest of the crew, but to take a leadership role. A medical doctor, Linenger definitely had important ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1973) to elevate his own status in this context. Overall, in contrast to the life in Star City, American astronauts had to face a reduction of social professional prominence upon their arrival to Mir. Considered rather as ‘guest’ flyers, they were frequently diverted from the operational tasks. The author cites his precursor, the astronaut John Blaha (‘credible witness’, van Dijk, 1993), who felt he was treated as an ‘inconvenience’, a ‘nuisance’ and a ‘second-class citizen’ on Mir (Linenger, 2000, pp. 124–125). A ‘shameful’ condition (Scheff, 1997) for representatives of the world’s leading nation, the secondary status of American astronauts on Mir the emerging solidarity of the crew, but it caused tensions between the program partners as well.

Personal agency and self-directedness associated with the American style are contrasted in the book narrative with perceived Russian cosmonauts’ passivity, conformity and subjection to power. Linenger explains this ‘slavery’ attitude as a psychosocial legacy of the socialist regime that transmitted itself into the new context of market relationships. On several occasions, the astronaut observes that crew members’ behaviour is shaped by a desire to protect their own in-flight records and related monetary benefits. Although Linenger can justify this attitude, he cannot accept it. Emotionality is another ‘weakness’ that Linenger finds to be typical for the cosmonauts, which does not fit into the professional norms of rationality and affective self-control. Assuming the roles of ‘friend’ and ‘therapist’, he provides ego support for the crew members while simultaneously trying to avoid contamination by their ‘destructive’ affective conditions. In this situation, he withdrew from interdependency in order to satisfy professional norms of rationality and emotional management, and to occupy the privileged position of an observer. In this way, Linenger’s sense of intimacy with the crew members fluctuates from close solidarity in the moments of crisis to light alienation when the condition passes over, and the established cognitive models obtain prominence in the interpretation of these interactions.

The theme of solidarity almost disappears from the narration when the American Shuttle Atlantis comes to release the astronaut from his duty. This is a moment of re-socialization and return to a ‘normal’ life. Re-entry into the habitual environment is not unproblematic: the Shuttle crew does not recognize Linenger at first, ‘Or maybe they even wondered whether they should open the hatch before identifying the stranger’ (ibid., p. 213). Stuck with the Russian lifestyle for several months, the astronaut was worried that he would be taken for the ‘other’ by his compatriots. He assumed an association with Robinson Crusoe, an image evoking the experience of a wild, challenging environment and a long-term diversion from civilized life. Familiar language, decent living facilities and opportunities to take care of oneself provided on the Shuttle contrasted dramatically with the situation on Mir. The five-month-long journey on the Russian orbital complex is now seen as yet another challenging life episode. It does not trigger any specific emotional response in the astronaut as he heads back to Earth and his habitual cultural surroundings: ‘When the hatch closed between the vehicles, I was not particularly sad or glad; I remained emotionally neutral. I did acclaim that it sure was nice to be talking English once again and to hear news from home’ (ibid., p. 219).

 

Discussion and Conclusion

 

The book narration constructs a series of identities and a specific cognitive model of which they speak. In the initial book chapters, ‘the Russians’ are Star City inhabitants. They are unspecified and contrasted with Americans on the basis of material and ideological conditions. Illiberty, passivity and backwardness make the ordinary Russians ‘proper’ objects of Western paternalism and messianic ethos. The category of ‘Russians’ narrows down during the in-flight period to a Russian space agency that, according to the author, arbitrarily exposes the space flyers (with whom Linenger now closely identifies) to life-threatening conditions in the name of economic benefits. Financial considerations seem to stand behind NASA’s reaction to the situation on Mir as well. As acknowledged in one of program’s reports, ‘For less than two percent of the total cost of the Space Station program, NASA gained knowledge and experience through Shuttle-Mir that could not be achieved any other way. That included valuable experience in international crew training activities; the operation of an international space program; and the challenges of long duration spaceflight for astronauts and ground controllers’ (NASA, 1998, emphasis added). Not surprisingly, NASA’s experts were struggling over the continuation of the program even when the U.S. Congress initiated a hearing on Mir safety in September 1998 (Freeman, 2000). In this way, organizational interests from both sides took precedence over the well-being of individual flyers.

Finally, the Russian cosmonauts (Linenger’s crew members with whom he developed close relationships in times of crisis) remained strangers for him. In line with the initial cognitive scheme, cosmonauts are perceived as a product of an opposing social-political system, even though their attitudes are predominantly shaped by market-driven reality. Linenger thus refuses to acknowledge that in a manner not less than a dictatorship, the market can restrict and oppress. Scheff (1997) suggested that intimacy is dynamic, building on a mixture of alienation and solidarity. The astronaut solidarizes with the Russian space flyers as individuals subjected to the same threatening conditions, but distances from them as representatives of an alien social-ideological order. In the book’s closing chapter, Linenger refers to the crew members as ‘former cold war enemies’ (Linenger, 2000, p. 248); this exposes a recursive dynamic of relationships, measured in the current study by the I/We ratio. Has the astronaut entirely ‘forgot’ (Scheff, 1997) all the challenges the crew members overcame together and the related feeling of camaraderie? A particularly cosmopolitan discourse abruptly surfaces in the last pages of the book:

We are on the earth together, and the earth when viewed from space is not divided up piecemeal, but exists as a wondrous whole. We need to recognize that our almost insane preoccupation with identifying and frightening over our differences is absurd. We should be counting our blessings daily, not squabbling among ourselves. (Linenger, 2000, p. 247)

The same cosmopolitan motives continue to appear in Linenger’s TED talks at the beginning of the 2000s, to become the master message of his flight (Linenger, 2011, 2014). It is interesting to observe that these ideas have been, for decades, a part of the cosmonauts’ discourse. Thus, Valentin Lebedev, who spent seven months on the space station Salyut 7 in early 1980s wrote in his diary: ‘During this flight I’ve caught myself thinking that it doesn’t make any difference to me which country we are flying over, our own or others. We feel close to the whole Earth. It doesn’t matter where we are. The Earth is inside us and we are part of it. From the space there is no part of the Earth that is foreign. It is completely one, and I accept it as my home’ (Lebedev, 1988, pp. 233–234). The reader is free to guess on his/her own as to whether the exposure to the Russian space culture had triggered the process of insocialization, or whether the very conditions of long-term spaceflight stimulated a more tolerant attitude. Obviously, however, that the developed by the astronaut’s rhetoric potentially opened up towards further cross-national exchanges. 

The current study addressed the phenomenon of long-duration outer space missions, looking at the dynamics of interpersonal relationships among members of international crews. Group heterogeneity is traditionally considered by space psychology to be among the major stress factors (Harrison, 2001), and conflicts were expected in the course of the Mir/Shuttle program as well. The author of the analysed book, however, insisted on unproblematic interactions with Russian crewmates and even on the development of a form of solidarity in opposition to the power abuse by ground mission control. This solidarity turned out to be a fragile one, having been undermined by a binary thinking grounded in the history of geopolitical confrontation, but shared experiences of danger and struggle for survival helped the astronaut to define a new perspective on coexistence.

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Anderson, B. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London & New York, 2006.

Bourdieu, P. Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction // R. Brown, Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change. London, 1973. Pp. 71-112.

Brzezinski. M. Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age. New York, 2007.

Cadbury, D. Space Race: The Epic Battle between America and the Soviet Union for Domination in Space.  New York, 2006.

Cernan, E. and D. Davis. Astronaut Eugene Cerman and America’s Race in Space: The Last Astronaut on the Moon. New York, 1999.

Chambers, D. Social Media and Personal Relationships: Online Intimacies and Network Friendship. London, 2013.

Draguns, J. and A. Harrison. Spaceflight and Cross-Cultural Psychology // D. Vakoch Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective. The NASA History Series. Washington, DC, 2011. Pp. 177–194.

Energia (n.d.). Chronology of Manned Flights. The Orbital Complex Mir. https://www.energia.ru/ru/history/flights/mir-chron01.html Last visit January 5, 2018.

Fabian, J. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York, 2002.

Forstie, C. A new framing for an old sociology of intimacy // Sociology Compass. 2017. Doi: 10.1111/soc4.12367

Freeman, M. Challenges of Human Space Exploration. Chichester, UK, 2000.

Gerovitch, S. “‘Why are we telling lies?’: The creation of Soviet space history myths // The Russian Review. 2011. Vol. 70. n 3. Pp. 460–484.

Gerovitch, S. Voices of the Soviet Space Program: Cosmonauts, Soldiers, and Engineers Who Took the USSR into Space. New York, 2014.

Gerovitch, S. Soviet Space Mythologies: Public Images, Private Memories, and the Making of a Cultural Identity. Pittsburgh, 2015.

Hardt, M. and A. Negri. Empire. Harvard, 2000.

Hall, A. Border Watch: Cultures of Immigration, Detention and Control. London, 2012.

Hall, R., Shayler, D. and V. Bert. Russia’s Cosmonauts: Inside the Yuri Gagarin Training Center. New York & London, 2005.

Harland, D. The Story of Space Station Mir. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 2005.

Harris, P.R. Space Enterprise: Living and Working Off-world in the 21 Century. Chichester, UK, 2009.

Harrison, A. Spacefaring: The Human Dimension. Berkley, Los Angeles, London, 2001.

Harrison, A., Clearwater, Y.A. and Ch. Mckay (Eds). From Antarctica to Outer Space. New York, 1991.

Henriksson, A. Organizing Intimacy: Exploring Heterosexual Singledoom at Swedish Singles Activities / Ph.D. dissertation; Karlstad University, 2014.

HSF NASA. Linenger Increment: A Spacewalk and a Fire, 2013 https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/people/p-residents.htm. Last visit January 5, 2018.

Kanas, M. and D. Manzey. Space Psychology and Psychiatry. El Segundo, California, 2008. 

Kanas, N. (2011) From Earth’s Orbit to the Outer Plants and Beyond: Psychological Issues in Space // Acta Astronautica. 2011. Vol. 68. Pp. 576-581.

Kanas, N., Salnitskyi, V.P., Grund, E., Gushin, V., Weiss, D., Kozerenko, O., Sled, A and C.R. Marmar (2000). Social and Cultural Issues during Shuttle/Mir Space Mission // Acta Astronautica. 2000. Vol. 47. No. 2-9. Pp. 647–655.

Kanas, N., Salnitskyi, V.P., Grund, E., Weiss, D., Gushin, V., Kozerenko, O., Sled, A and C.R. Marmar (2001). Human Interactions in Space: Results from Shuttle/Mir // Acta Astronautica. 2001. Vol. 49. no. 3-10. Pp. 243–260.

Kanas, N.A., Salnitskyi, V.P., Ritsher, J.B., Gushin, V.I., Weiss, D.S., Saylor, S.A., Kozerenko, O.P. and C.R. Marmar. Human Interactions in Space: ISS vs Shuttle/Mir // Acta Astronautica. 2006, Vol. 59. Pp. 413–419.

Ketokivi, K. The Relational Self and the Social Bond and the Dynamics of Personal Relationships. A Sociological Analysis / Ph.D. dissertation; University of Helsinki, 2010.

Lebedev, V. Diary of a Cosmonaut: 211 Days in Space. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland. 1988.

Linenger, J. Off the Planet. Serving Five Perilous Months aboard the Space Station Mir. New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, 2000. 

Linenger, J. Jerry Linenger-Changing Your Perspective, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OoJ_756rr4. Last visit January 5 2018.

Linenger, J. Changing Perspective off the Planet: Jerry Linenger at TEDxUNC, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cIh_rOOgnA. Last visit January 5 2018.

Morgan, C. Shuttle-Mir: The United States and Russia Share History's Highest Stage. Houston, 2013.

Morphew, M.E. Psychological and Human Factors in Long-duration Spaceflight // MJM. 2001. Vol. 6. Pp. 74–80.

NASA. The International Space Station: Benefits from the Shuttle-Mir Program IS-1998-08-ISS010JSC, 1998. https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/references/documents/benefits.pdf. Last visit January 5 2018.

NASA. Cooperation Timeline 1962 – 1993. 2013a.  https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/history/h-before.htm. Last visit January 5 2018.

NASA. Goals. 2013b. https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/welcome/goals.htm. Last visit January 5 2018.

Nied, G. and P.M. Vorobiev Phase 1 Program Joint Report. NASA SP–1999–6108.
https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/shuttle-mir/references/documents/phase1-joint-report.pdf. Last visit January 5 2018.

Palinkas, L. (2001). Psychological issues in long-term space flights: overview // Gravitation and Space Biology Bulletin. 2001. Vol. 14. No. 2. Pp. 25–33.

Said, E. Orientalism, London, 2003.

Scheff, T. Emotions, the Social Bond, and Human Reality. Part/whole Analysis. UK, Cambridge, 1997.

Suedfeld, P., Wilk, K. and L. Cassel (2011) Flying with Strangers: Postmission Reflection of Multinational Space Crews // D. Vakoch Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective. The NASA History Series. Washington, DC, 2011. Pp. 143-176.

van Dijk, T.A. Principles of critical discourse analysis // Discourse and Society. 1993. Vol 4, No 2. Pp. 249-283.

Wilson, A. The Infrastructure of intimacy // Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 2016, Vol. 41. No. 2. Pp. 247–80.