As Space Visits Lengthen, Astronauts Fear Mission Madness : NASA: With Americans spending more time in orbit and a space station just two years away, psychological factors take on added import. One shuttle commander decided to padlock the hatch, just in case.

It was space shuttle commander Bryan O’Connor’s call.

Worried someone might open the hatch and kill everyone--inadvertently or otherwise--O’Connor had a trusted crew member place a padlock on the hatch’s handle as soon as Columbia reached orbit that overcast June morning.

Besides O’Connor, only two or three others on the seven-member crew knew the combination of the lock, which stayed put until it was time for the shuttle to come home nine days later. Among those not informed were the two payload specialists--NASA terminology for guest fliers, usually scientists.

“I’d known these other people for years and years,” O’Connor explained. “These payload specialists, they’re a little bit less of a known entity.”

With Americans spending longer periods in orbit and construction of an international space station just two years away, the human factor--trust, boredom, despair--takes on added import.

Like it or not, people of varied nationalities, abilities and tastes will be stuck with each other for three to six months in orbit once the space station is up and running.

Luckily for Dr. Norman Thagard, the astronaut-physician apparently got along well with his two Russian crewmates aboard Russia’s Mir station.

His only moment of distress, compounded by cultural confusion, came when the mother of Mir commander Vladimir Dezhurov died unexpectedly in June, three months into the mission. The news was radioed up from Russia’s Mission Control outside Moscow.

“I didn’t know whether the typical American response, which is to try to console, would be the exact wrong thing to do,” Thagard said. He took his cue from the other Russian on board.

Such devastating news easily could trigger depression, something space programs want to avoid because of the potentially deadly consequences in a confined craft.

O’Connor, who now directs NASA’s shuttle program, expects this to become a more common problem as Americans spend more time in space.

As it stands now, NASA would notify an astronaut in orbit about the death of a family member only after consulting with the next-of-kin. Although a shuttle mission would not be cut short because of a family emergency, O’Connor said every effort likely would be made to quickly bring a grieving crew member back from the international space station.

Until Thagard’s 115-day space stint, the longest an American spent in orbit was 84 days--more than two decades ago. A Russian physician holds the world record of 439 straight days.

“If we expect to send people on [Mars] missions of two or three years, we darn well better deal with the psychological aspects in addition to the physiological ones,” NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin said after Thagard and his Russian crewmates returned to Earth on July 7. “This hasn’t been our tendency in the past.”

For Thagard, spending almost four months in orbit posed no psychological problem. Had it been six months or more, he’s not sure he would have made it, given the lack of news, sporadic family contact and sometimes slow work pace. He did not get most of his research equipment until the beginning of June because of a laboratory-delivery delay.

“May seemed to be a real long month,” Thagard said. “I found myself, really, with too much time on my hands.”

Throughout Thagard’s stay on Mir, Russia’s Mission Control monitored the crew’s conversations and appearances, on the lookout for signs of stress.

The longer the flight, the less intense it is, and boredom and compatibility can become crucial factors, said Italian engineer and physicist Franco Malerba, who flew on a padlock-free Atlantis in 1992.

“I’m not saying claustrophobia, but that feeling of imprisonment,” Malerba said. “That probably requires a personality that is similar to that of a monk, of somebody who likes loneliness.”

NASA goes out of its way to select hardy individuals as astronauts, putting candidates through hours of psychological tests.

O’Connor, a 6-footer, recalls being zipped inside an inflatable ball about one yard in diameter for what seemed to be an hour when he applied to the astronaut program in the late 1970s.

Payload specialists, on the other hand, are not subjected to such intense scrutiny. Among those hitching shuttle rides over the years--a U.S. senator, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, even a Saudi prince.

“They show up later. They don’t go through the same selection criteria. They don’t have all the meetings with the shrinks. They’re kind of a different group,” O’Connor said.

As for his flight in June, 1991, O’Connor said a urine-monitoring machine was located near Columbia’s hatch, used by the crew to get in and out of the shuttle. That machine meant a lot of traffic at one of the most potentially hazardous spots in the ship. Open the hatch even a crack in the vacuum of space, and the crew compartment instantly loses pressure and everyone dies.

Even though the handle has a safety pin to prevent an accidental opening of the hatch, O’Connor decided it would be “prudent” to use the combination lock. He said he discussed it with his crew and no one objected.

Payload specialist Millie Hughes-Fulford wasn’t the least bit offended at not knowing the combination.

“There were so many things on the shuttle we didn’t handle,” said Hughes-Fulford, a scientist at the Department of Veterans Affairs in San Francisco.

Besides, she said, “I had no desire to get out while I was in orbit.”