The Daily Telegraph - Features
Don’t mention the war: how to get on with a Russian when you’re in space
The secret to cosmic harmony is never complain, say Nasa astronauts – just rant to family. By Abigail Buchanan
On Earth, cooperation and goodwill between Russia and the West has reached ground zero. But 250 miles up into space, it’s a different story. So, could astronauts teach us a valuable lesson about how to get along?
Last week, a fresh crew of three US astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) in a SpaceX rocket. Nasa’s Matthew Dominick, Michael Barratt and Jeanette Eppsor and Roscomos’ Alexander Grebenkin will spend a six-month stint working together on scientific research.
They will replace a crew from the US, Denmark, Japan and Russia, who have been on board the ISS since August.
It has been two years since Russia invaded Ukraine. But aboard the ISS, which hurtles above us at 17,100 miles per hour, it is business as usual, and astronauts and cosmonauts (their Russian counterparts) must overcome political strife to work together in close quarters for months at a time.
That includes living together, sharing meals, celebrating Christmas, and even conversing in a Russian/English dialect the astronauts fondly refer to as “Runglish.” It is a partnership that goes back decades – in 1975, the first handshake in space between an astronaut and a cosmonaut helped thaw the Cold War and laid the foundations for collaborative space missions to come.
Nick Kanas is a professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of California and the author of a new book, Behavioral Health and Human Interactions in Space. Back in the late 1990s, Nasa assigned Kanas to research the psychosocial wellbeing of astronauts in the Shuttle-Mir programme, where American astronauts spent three to six months working alongside cosmonauts on a Russian space station. Space, Kanas says, is a “nice model for international cooperation, which we certainly need these days”.
Dinner party rules ban conversations about politics, sex and religion. So is the key to getting on in space simply not mentioning war on Earth? “I can’t imagine that it doesn’t come up sometimes,” says Kanas. “But I don’t believe they dwell on [it].”
Scott Kelly, an American astronaut, spent a year aboard the ISS with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. “You feel like a representative of the whole planet, especially when you have an international crew,” he said in a 2017 interview with Harvard Business Review. “Occasionally someone will do something to get on your nerves, but then you realise you’re probably doing stuff to get on their nerves, too. So you just move on. I’ve seen two cosmonauts who didn’t talk to each other for months. That’s not an ideal situation.”
Kelly says he dealt with interpersonal conflict on his year-long mission by exercising – which astronauts do daily, sometimes for two hours at a time
– and by “having a sounding board at home”. It can be a challenge to get along with colleagues at the best of times. But in space, you’re in far closer proximity than in an open-plan office and for far longer durations.
Astronauts must undergo a psychological profile before they are selected, so those who make it will be fairly confident that they can already navigate conflict and get along. But all astronauts are still encouraged to speak to friends and family, which they can do “pretty much 24/7”, says Kanas. There is also access to a dedicated counselling staff available on the ground.
So what happens if a colleague is being infuriating, tetchy, or just slurping their noodles in an annoying way? Kanas says you just deal with this how you would on Earth – ignore it. Stay professional, and then complain to friends and family later.
Prep for potential cross-cultural problems starts a year beforehand. Training is sometimes taught in the other party’s language and astronauts also “spend some time on the ground discussing different cultural factors”, says Kanas.
There are Russian, American and European living “segments” on the ISS, but coming together for (freeze-dried) meals is key to extraterrestrial harmony. (The ISS has 13,696 cubic feet of living space in total, including two bathrooms, a gym, and a 360-degree viewing bay called the cupola.)
“They are encouraged to eat meals together, as a way of socialising, and they do have parties,” Kanas says. “For example, Christmas, or they might celebrate a Russian holiday, worker’s day I think was one that was celebrated – so they do acknowledge each other’s culture through little ceremonies and parties.”
Astronaut Nicole Stott, who served as an engineer on two ISS missions, says shared dinners were a daily highlight. “You’re all floating around the dinner table, you’re sharing food, you have food from all the different countries [represented]. I don’t know what the secret sauce is,” she says, but astronauts have a “wonderful way of cooperating” no matter what is happening down below.
The next frontier is Mars, where missions are predicted to take around two-and-a-half years.
“The support strategies that work really well in orbit [such as regular contact with friends and family] will not be as available to a crew going to Mars,” Kanas says.
But above all, astronauts draw strength from recognising that a successful mission is for the greater good. “It’s in the interests of both America and Russia right now to have the ISS continue and to finish it, you need everybody to properly operate the facility,” says Kanas.
Kelly previously wrote that, “the [ISS] is a great symbol of cooperation between formerly warring countries. But it is also a real place where people live, work and form unbreakable friendships.
“Misha [a Russian cosmonaut colleague] and I often joked that if we wanted our countries to get along, we should send our leaders to the space station, where they must cooperate and rely on each other for their lives,” he added. “Maybe we need only recognise that we already do.”
‘Two cosmonauts didn’t speak to each other for two months. That is not an ideal situation.’