Ken Cavanagh was thinking about space travel long before he started working in the space industry. In this episode, I talk to Ken about his new, thought-provoking essay, The Challenge to Astronauts.
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Transcript
This transcript is AI-generated and may not be completely accurate. Please do not quote myself or any of my guests based on this transcript.
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:00:00] Welcome to the department, 12 podcast, where we talk about everything industrial and organizational psychology. My guest on this episode is Ken Kavanaugh. How are you tonight, Ken?
Ken Cavanagh : [00:00:10] All right.
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:00:11] Ken got his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Syracuse university and his master’s degree in IO, psych from city, university of New York, Brooklyn college. The reason I invited you on camera and is to talk about an essay that you released a little earlier this month called the challenge to astronauts, and it’s about the psychology of space exploration. Why do you write an essay like this?
Ken Cavanagh : [00:00:36] I’ve always been really interested in this as a space. W one of my focuses in graduate school was team and group behavior.
And it was just always a fun thought for me to think about what would it be like to be the psychologist who is studying team behavior for Astra? You know these are some of the most highly performing teams, if not be most highly performing teams to exist. And that would be a pretty cool job.
So that’s really what sparked this interest. And along with actually a paper that I recently discovered which is well worth the read. Called the psychology of space exploration. It’s published by NASA and it goes into really deep historical detail about how NASA and the field of psychology work together throughout time.
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:01:30] When I think about astronauts, the iconic image of course, is Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. And I tend to think of the Apollo missions, especially Apollo 11 and 1969.
And you start your essay with an observation that the biggest challenge that we face at that time were really technological rather than psychological.
Ken Cavanagh : [00:01:51] At the time what we were doing in the space industry was extraordinary, but the keyword there is at the time, I mean, it was 1969.
If you look at the highest degree of technology and the average American household, you probably found a color chart. And it wasn’t until really the 1970s technology really started to take off.
So I mentioned in DSA copy desk, critical cassette player, the first cell phone, and even the apple one. All the least in the seventies. So it’s that turning point for technology where we start to see some of the big changes around the globe that we’re now so involved with today and probably most of the time take for granted.
But what you don’t really see is what is happening with tech knowledge behind the scenes in the space industry. And you can only really take what happened in 1969 and what they’re working with and what we know about the space industry.
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:02:50] , the computers that were talking to each other on right now and most certainly the network over which we’re talking to each other right now would have seemed. Science fiction to the people that actually went to the moon came back.
So it’s, it’s a remarkable engineering achievement that they pulled it off. And the remarkable human achievement that the astronauts who did that work were able to operate these highly complex machines. But according to your essay the operation or the piloting , It’s not really all that complicated anymore.
Ken Cavanagh : [00:03:22] A lot of the functionality the job that an astronaut typically would have had to do has been reduced by the implementation of autonomous vehicle controls. That means that the level of skill that someone needs to be able to board a spacecraft and to be able to dock somehow has essentially been reduced to no skill at all.
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:03:48] So now that the job of an astronaut technologically speaking has gotten so much easier because AI is. Doing a lot of the work that, Neil Armstrong and buzz Aldrin and other sort of done in the past, I guess the job of an astronauts really easy now, I’m guessing you’re not quite agree with that.
Ken Cavanagh : [00:04:08] Well, it’s definitely still a tough job. I mean, there’s a lot to astronauts jobs that doesn’t really go into the public as much. Typically astronauts are very involved in the entire process of engineering. To the actual mission itself, because and there are still a lot of things that you need to do as an astronaut, or that really come from a pilot background
I think now there’s much more emphasis on that. Then there was the in the past where the emphasis was on both on the job itself and if something goes wrong but now the job itself is a bit easier, but you still do need that high level of proficiency and expertise because if something does go wrong, if something needs to be fixed on the fly you need to know how to be able to.
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:04:57] So when IO psychologists get together and we talk about unusual or extreme workplaces sometimes these days we’re talking about things like driving Uber , but it’s hard to imagine a more extreme workplace than outer space. And, and you argue in this essay that the, the men and women who become astronauts, they have to make calm and positive mind. , could you just explain, why that is given how much has been automated?
Ken Cavanagh : [00:05:22] Yeah, sure. And it goes back to what I just mentioned. If something is to go wrong, the worst thing you can do with pants and anything can go wrong.
From a small poor, poor decision to an anomaly that impacts the entire mission. Astronaut has to be able to respond in the most effective way possible, and that means being able to have a calm and quiet mind without panic to make good decisions, because that’s really. What astronauts too bad, they make good decisions.
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:05:58] You also mentioned in the article that we’re probably just a few decades away from becoming a true space bearing civilization, which I think is a great way to put that in a great way to think about it.
When we think about space exploration. Now we think about. A small handful of astronauts who pilot a particular craft or spend time on a space station. But the challenges that we’re looking at now is not just going in and putting our foot on the moon and bringing back some samples, but actually building a base there or some kind of facility. It seems like there’s going to be more people involved in that then the folks we traditionally think of as astronauts,
Ken Cavanagh : [00:06:39] yeah. I think that’s absolutely fair. And I think you really hit the nail on the head there. It’s coming to the point where. We’re going to start seeing the responsibilities and the work that needs to be done to reach the goals of the industry or the particular corporation expand beyond astronaut capabilities or typical skill sets and in order to do well, I should back up for a second because I think.
Two parts here. There’s this idea of the establishment of a basis of other facilities, extra planetary facilities. There’s the Artemis project which is an upcoming project to start building the lunar base. That project in itself is going to start to introduce the need for different skills. But that project itself is also going to get people to start thinking about the fact that baseplate is not going to be a government monopoly forever. I mean the vast majority of space Corporations now are associated with government.
There are quite a few startups now who are building rockets and doing contracts but still a lot of those contracts are all government contracts. Eventually we’re going to start to see commercial space flight become much, much more. And that’s where you’re going to have all sorts of different skillsets and all sorts of different types of people being involved in a space industry and astronauts are probably just going to be this small, small, but important piece of the larger puzzle.
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:08:20] So it sounds like as the, the technological. A burden on, on astronauts decreases and the psychological burden increases and the psychological burden on other space going employees, beyond the astronauts that we can think of maybe as the pilots of the craft increase. You know, you argue that, you know, IO psychologists are going to.
To fill some of the most important shoes the industry leading space agencies in the coming decades. When you think about the challenges that those IO psychologists will face what kinds of questions are you most interested in? What do you think they should be looking at or thinking about now?
Ken Cavanagh : [00:09:00] I think there are a few really important questions. When we establish some sort of extra planetary base or colony or whatever that becomes who governs, who decides what the rules are. Is it the organization who established it? And then what is the organizational structure that you need to support such a thing?
Then how do you choose the people who get to go explore and invent the new front here? I think it’s really important that we start thinking about these things really soon, because. I have a feeling what will happen is that this industry is going to blow up faster than we say . It’s just a matter of how are we gonna think about them beforehand?
Or are we going to make the decision when the time comes? Yeah.
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:09:52] You mentioned employee selection, a challenge of. Who gets to go on these missions, it’s a, it’s a new kind of challenge for IO psychologists, because you’re not just trying to predict job performance or even organizational fit. It’s really a more holistic kind of selection process because it’s about somebody’s whole life, you know, they’re not going to.
Punch out at 5:00 PM and go home there, there, there, and that’s going to be their life. And that also makes me think that, it’s an opportunity for interdisciplinary work because it’s not just going to be about the workplace. It’s going to be an important workplace and an unusual one that it’s also going to be about.
What is life like a 24 7, 365 for people in this environment living their lives on a lunar base or a space station?
Ken Cavanagh : [00:10:43] Let’s think about just the current situation with the pandemic, know how some people have been in a remote working environment for a full year having team, the office, having interacted face to face.
If anybody from the office for an entire year and the level of stress that some people are going through with feeling, and you’re still here now, imagine having to deal with that, but your home and your planet and your entire environment is exclusive to a handful of people. And you may work with people from earth, then you may communicate with them.
But the only people that you’re going to have face-to-face contact with is that handful of people you originally came with. And if we start to talk about places like Mars, which right now take about six to eight months, I think it is. To get there. And because of the way that the planets rotate around the side, you could only travel to Mars at a certain time of the year.
So I believe it’s about two years minimum. Someone would need to stay on Mars if they went there and after. I listened to this podcast. I mentioned in the essay called the habitat. And it’s a really interesting podcast because it takes a handful of people and puts them in a Mar simulation, which is essentially this area, this very small area of Hawaii kind of volcanic looking that does its best to simulate what it would be like if we had five people there for a year and the.
The interpersonal dynamic gets really interesting. And as a psychologist, I’m sure you can guess there is no escaping the conflict there and it happens. And it’s really going to be interesting. What happens for people who have to stay there for long periods of time. Fed up with it and fed up with the people that they’re with and how are they going to continue doing their jobs as well.
In that type of circumstance, it, to me, that sounds like a pretty tough situation to be in, regardless of who you are. I think just the. The human interaction is something that is constantly fluctuating. It could go good. It could go bad, but there’s almost never a situation within a group, especially when you’re talking about months to years at a time where conflict doesn’t arise and you have to wonder how that will impact.
The larger goals of the mission or the organization that’s attempting to establish a call or whatever it is, you know,
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:13:33] As you mentioned, sort of what the working and living conditions are going to be like for a Mars mission.
The, the most immediate analogy that came to my mind was the nuclear submarine. So. If someone were to say, Hey, Ben, this would be a bad move on their part because I’m definitely not qualified to do this, but Hey, Ben, you know, you need to start thinking seriously about, the psychology of space travel and how do we find the right people and what is the governance like and how do we ensure people can do these very difficult jobs confined in high pressure circumstances.
I might start by looking at. Well, how do Navy Mariners do this on a nuclear submarine? Because although the time is probably not as close to the kind of timeframe that we’re looking at for Mars, it is a really extended period of time. Teamwork is absolutely crucial. You are separated from family, you know, there’s a lot of sort of similarities.
I just wonder, have you heard about any kind of. Analogs like that that those who are interested in this research have found.
Ken Cavanagh : [00:14:40] There are a few different analogs. A lot of them run by Matt to study or universities who work with NASA on a particular research. A lot of it is done in Antartica. But there are a few different types of analog environments that they do these types of studies in for exactly this purpose.
I think one of the biggest problems that we have. It’s very relatable to some of the work that psychologists do in organization and that’s answering surveys. Something I learned from the habitat podcast was that astronauts have to respond to, I dunno, see 20 something, share surveys per bay questions about how their day went, what they did, how they’re feeling, if they’re stressed.
You know, anything you could imagine. That’s a measurable psychological construct. That’s applicable to the situation. And they’re literally sitting there writing these things out. So one of the things that I had thought about that could be a good project for the more technically savvy IO psychologist is coming up with some sort of technology that can mitigate that, that could reduce the amount of effort that someone in that position has to go through to respond to all those surveys maybe first or what that looks like. But I, I, what’s interesting about that too. Yeah. That potential tool is that it’s not just applicable to astronaut ticket actually will be really applicable to a lot of organizations because I’m sure, you know surveying points has become a really, really big thing over the past year.
Ben Butina, Ph.D.: [00:16:20] Yeah. And the the trend is more towards pulse surveys where you’re conducting them more often with fewer items over a longer period of time, rather than one big survey every year or every couple of years. And this is kind of an extreme version of that, where you have it sounds like a lot of items that are being administered just about every day.
And I think the survey fatigue must be it must be really tough.
I could probably go on like this just spit balling ideas for another hour, but I think you would probably lose your patience. And I think the listeners would as well. So thank you very much for this fascinating conversation and I will encourage the listeners to check out the challenge to astronauts.
. Thank you for being on the show, Ken.
Ken Cavanagh : [00:17:03] Yeah, absolutely. Ben, thanks you. Thanks for having me.
