Psychology and Space

The time is not far distant when space expeditions will have dozens of members. The American Apollo-11 spacecraft has already landed on the Moon. People will set foot on Mars, and, possibly, other planets. How will they stand up to the difficult conditions there? What sort of problems will they encounter? Will they be able to cope with them? Research work done by space psychologists in recent years has shown that the unusual conditions in store for people on a space voyage may have a decisive effect on its outcome. For this reason an astronaut's psychological training is no less important than his ability to control his spacecraft. It is this aspect of astronaut training that is dealt with by the authors of this book: the world's first astronaut, Yuri Gagarin, Hero of the Soviet Union, and the space psychologist Vladimir Lebedev. But this is not a book about psychology alone. It also speaks of Soviet space hardware, describes actual space flights, and surveys investigations carried out in aviation and space medicine.