Abstract
Human services planning for crews who go to Mars is in its earliest phase, but the modalities for service delivery are well worth anticipating because they could involve some of the first innovations that merge physical, biological, and digital capacities on the new planet. This chapter examines the constraints of the planet Mars, itself, on all humans. It anticipates how “exogenous stressors” (gravity, atmosphere, radiation, light, and dust) might affect the psychological, social, and cultural capacities and conflicts of the earliest crews. Several types of service modalities are explored: hibernation; medication management; traditional psychotherapy; long-distance modalities to approximate the “talking cure”; digitized, keyed psychology workbooks; robotics, or service delivery without verbal feedback; AI technologies, or service delivery with verbal feedback; problem-solving at the cultural level; digital bulletin boards to substitute for journaling; and a special section on the issue of privacy. The chapter rounds out with a section, on types of spiritual services that may be beneficial even for those who profess no faith. We focus on “sacred space,” and on death and burial ritual on Mars. Factors explored here reflect the backgrounds of the two authors: one, a cultural anthropologist and biologist, and the other, an astronomer who is also a Catholic priest.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Acevedo, B. P., Aron, E. N., Aron, A., Sangster, M.-D., Collins, N., & Brown, L. L. (2014). The highly sensitive brain: An fMRI study of sensory processing sensitivity and response to others’ emotions. Brain and Behavior, 4, 580–594.
Ackermann, M., & van den Bogert, A. J. (2012). Predictive simulation of gait at low gravity reveals skipping as the preferred locomotion strategy. Journal of Biomechanics, 45(7), 1293–1298.
Aron, E. N., Aron, A., & Jagiellowicz, J. (2012). Sensory processing sensitivity: A review in the light of the evolution of biological responsibility. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 262–282.
Banks, M. R., Willoughby, L. M., & Banks, W. A. (2008). Animal-assisted therapy and loneliness in nursing homes: Use of robotic versus living dogs. Journal of American Medical Directors Association, 9, 173–177.
Birks, M., Bodak, M., Barlas, J., Harwood, J., & Pether, M. (2016). Robotic seals as therapeutic tools in an aged care facility: A qualitative study. Journal of Aging Research, Article ID 8569602, 7 pages.
Braddock, M. (2018). Concepts for deep space travel: From warp drives and hibernation to world ships and cryogenics. Current Trends Biomedical Engineering & Bioscience, 12(5), 555847.
Bradford, J., Schaffer, M., & Talk, D. (2014). Torpor inducing transfer habitat for human stasis to mars. Final report prepared for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Grant Number NNX13AP82G. May 11.
Calo, C. J., Hunt-Bull, N., Lewis, L., & Metzler, T. (2011). Ethical implications of using the Paro robot with a focus on dementia patient care. In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Human-Robot Interaction in Elder Care, WS-2011-2012, San Francisco, California, USA (pp. 20–24).
Camara, C., Peris-Lopez, P., & Tapiador, J. E. (2015). Security and privacy issues in implantable medical devices: A comprehensive survey. Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 55, 272–289.
Cochran, G., & Harpending, H. (2010). The 10,000 year explosion: How civilization accelerated human evolution. New York: Basic Books.
Cockell, C. (2002). Mars is an awful place to live. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 27(1), 32–38.
Cockell, C. S. (Ed.). (2016). Dissent, revolution and liberty beyond earth. New York: Springer Publishing.
Dindia, K., & Allen, M. (1992). Sex differences in self-disclosure: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 106–124.
Dutton, D. (2009). The art instinct: Beauty, pleasure, and human evolution. New York: Bloomsbury.
Forsyth, D. R. (2015). Group psychotherapy, clinical psychology. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (2nd ed., Vol. 10, pp. 428–433). Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
Gaudin, S. (2014). When astronauts breathe on mars, they’ll thank MIT professor; Researchers building device that will create oxygen on the red planet. Computerworld (Online. August 7, 2018).
Halperin, D., Heydt-Benjamin, T. S., Kevin, F., Kohno, T., & Maisel, W. H. (2008). Security and privacy for implantable medical devices. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 7, 30–39.
Hawks, J., Wang, E. T., Cochran, G. M., Harpending, H. C., & Moyzis, R. K. (2007). Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(52), 20753–20758.
Holland, P. (2018). ‘My Special Aflac Duck’ is a robot to help kids with cancer. Retrieved June 19, 2018, from https://www.cnet.com/news/my-special-aflac-duck-robot-helps-kids-through-cancer/.
Hublin, J.-J., Ben-Ncer, A., Bailey, S. E., Freidline, S. E., Neubauer, S., Skinner, M. M., et al. (2017). New fossils from Jebel Irhoud, Morocco and the Pan-African origin of homo sapiens. Nature, 546, 289–292.
Impey, C. (2018). Personal communication.
Kanas, N. (2014). The new martians. A scientific novel. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing (Digital edition).
Kanas, N. (2015). Humans in space; The psychological hurdles. Chichester, U.K.: Springer Praxis Books.
Kara, F. K., Darcy, A., & Vierhile, M. (2017). Delivering cognitive behavior therapy to young adults with symptoms of depression and anxiety using a fully automated conversational agent (Woebot): A randomized controlled trial. JMIR Mental Health, 4(2), e19.
Katzenbach, J. R., Steffen, I., & Kronley, C. (2012). Cultural change that sticks. Harvard Business Review, Vol. 90, pp. 110–117.
Kazdin, A. E., & Blasé, S. L. (2011). Rebooting psychotherapy research and practice to reduce the burden of mental illness. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 21–37.
Kino, E. F. (1919). Kino’s historical memoir of Pimeria Alta. (H. E. Bolton, Trans.). Bedford, MA: Applewood Books. (Original: 1683–1711).
Lucas, G. M., Gratch, J., King, A., & Morency, L.-P. (2014). It’s only a computer: Virtual humans increase willingness to disclose. Computers in Human Behavior, 37, 94–100.
Masi, C. M., Chen, H.-Y., Hawkley, L. C., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2011). A meta-analysis of interventions to reduce loneliness. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15(3), 219–266.
NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2011). Psychology of space exploration: Contemporary research in historical perspective. In: D. A. Vakoch (Ed.), The NASA History Series, NASA SP-2011-4411, Washington, D.C.: USGPO.
NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2018). NASA twins study confirms preliminary findings. Reported online by M. Edwards & L. Abadie, updated March 5, 2018 (by T. Gushanas (Ed.).
Newman, A. (2016). Therapy cats for dementia patients, batteries included. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/nyregion/robotic-therapy-cats-dementia.html; Oviedo, L. (2019). Raising the right questions. In this volume.
Pickard, M. D., Roster, C. A., & Chen, Y. (2016). Revealing sensitive information in personal interviews: Is self-disclosure easier with humans or avatars and under what conditions? Computers in Human Behavior, 65, 23–30.
Pycroft, L., Boccard, S. G., Owen, Sarah L. F., Stein, J. F., Fitzgerald, J. J., Green, A. L., et al. (2016). Brainjacking: Implant security issues in invasive neuromodulation. World Neurosurgery, 92, 454–462.
Rappaport, M. B. (2002). Hank chin; Scientist, seer, rebel, and founder of the first martian republic. Book II of The Nanotech Trilogy. Manuscript.
Schaffer, M., Bradford, J., & Talk, D. (2016). A feasible, near-term approach to human stasis for long-duration deep space missions. In 67th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Guadalajara, Mexico (pp. 1–17).
Seto, K. C., Golden, J. S., Alberti, M., & Turner II, B. L. (2017). Sustainability in an urbanizing planet. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(34), 8935–8938.
Snyder, M. (2013). Journaling. In R. Lindquist, M. Snyder, & M. F. Tracy (Eds.), Complementary & alternative therapies in nursing (7th ed., pp. 205–215). Chichester, U.K.: Springer.
Solomon, S. (2016). Future humans; inside the science of our continuing evolution. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Szocik, K. (2016). Religion in a future mars colony? Spaceflight. November.
Szocik, K., Marques, R. E., Abood, S., LysenkoRyba, A. K. K., & Minich, D. (2018). Biological and social challenges of human reproduction in a long-term mars base. Futures, 100, 56–62.
Szocik, K., Campa, R., Rappaport, M. B., & Corbally, C. (In press). The special case of modifications to counter bone loss for manned mars missions.
Tamir, D. I., & Mitchell, J. P. (2012). Disclosing information about the self is intrinsically rewarding. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109, 8038–8043.
Todd, R. M., Ehlers, M. R., Müller, D. J., Robertson, A., Palombo, D. J., Freeman, N., Levine, B., Anderson, A. K. (2015). Neurogenetic variations in norepinephrine availability enhance perceptual vividness. Journal of Neuroscience, 35, 6506–6516.
Ullrich, P., & Lutgendorf, S. K. (2002). Journaling about stressful events: Effects of cognitive processing and emotional expression. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24, 244–250.
Varnum, Michael E. W., & Grossmann, I. (2017). Cultural change: The how and the why. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 12, 956–972.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rappaport, M.B., Corbally, C. (2019). Program Planning for a Mars Hardship Post: Social, Psychological, and Spiritual Services. In: Szocik, K. (eds) The Human Factor in a Mission to Mars. Space and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02059-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02059-0_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02058-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02059-0
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)