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publicity and diminished funding. The danger is that an organization invested in downplaying psychological problems is unlikely to spend much time investigating solutions to those problems. “Until,” as Kraft puts it, “one of the astronauts goes with diapers* across the U.S. Now they are people suddenly!” (Two days after astronaut Lisa Nowak’s infamous confrontation with love rival Colleen Shipman, NASA ordered a review of its psychological screening and evaluation processes for astronauts.)
    Making things worse: Astronauts themselves try to hide emotional problems, out of fear they’ll be grounded. Access to psychologists is available during missions, but crew are reluctant to make use of it. “Every communication to them means a special notice in your flying book,” cosmonaut Alexandr Laveikin told me. “So we were always trying not to ask for specialists’ help.” Laveikin’s Mir mission with Yuri Romanenko was mentioned in a Quest article by Peter Pesavento on the psychological effects of space travel. Pesavento says Laveikin returned early from the mission due to “interpersonal issues and cardiac irregularity.” (I was to meet with Laveikin and Romanenko the next day.)
    It’s a dangerous state of affairs. If someone on board a spacecraft is reaching the breaking point, it’s important for ground control to know about it. People’s lives depend on them knowing that. This perhaps explains why so many space psychology experiments these days focus on ways to detect stress or depression in a person who doesn’t intend to tell you about it. If technologies being tested on Mars500 pan out, spacecraft—and other high-stress, high-risk workplaces like air-traffic control towers—will be outfitted with microphones and cameras hooked up to automated optical and speech-monitoring technology. The robotic spies can detect telltale changes in facial expressions or speech patterns and, hopefully, help those in command to avert a crisis.
    The stigma of psychological problems also makes them difficult to study. Astronauts are reluctant to sign on as study subjects, lest the researchers uncover something unflattering. The last time I spoke to NASA consulting psychologist Pam Baskins, she was about to begin an experiment comparing different sleep medications and dosages. The astronauts were to be woken from a sound sleep to see how the drugs affected their ability to function in a simulated middle-of-the-night emergency. It appealed to my sense of fun, and I asked if I could come watch. “Absolutely not,” replied Baskins. “It took me a year to convince these guys to participate.”
     
    A SPACE STATION is a rangy monstrosity, a giant Erector Set assembled by a madman. But the living area inside the Mir core module, where cosmonauts Alexandr Laveikin and Yuri Romanenko spent six months together, would fit in a Greyhound bus. The sleep chambers are less like bedrooms than like phone booths. They have no doors. My interpreter Lena and I are inside a mock-up of the module, in the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics, in Moscow. With us is Laveikin, who now runs the museum. Yuri Romanenko is on his way. I thought it would be interesting to talk with them inside the room that nearly drove them mad.
    Laveikin looks little changed from his official portrait, where he conveys an impression of guileless good cheer. He kisses our hands as though we’re royalty. It’s neither affectation nor flirtation, just something that Russian men of his era were taught to do. He wears beige linen pants, a splash of cologne, and the cream-colored summer footwear I’ve been seeing all week on the feet of the men across from me in the Metro.
    Laveikin waves hello to a narrow-girdled, suntanned man in jeans, with sunglasses hooked in the V of his shirt collar. It’s Romanenko. He is cordial, but not a hand-kisser. Cigarette smoke has roughed up his vocal cords. The two embrace. I count the seconds. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three.