Our space-bound humans will bring with them a culture composed, in part, of the dominant culture in their nation state of origin. They will also bring cultural aspects from the techno-scientific community from which they are sourced and, perhaps, from the selection and training environment that produces the crew and passenger cohort.
The successful crew will have a culture that addresses the physical and emotional challenges of long-duration spaceflight. This culture is a framework of mutually expected and accepted behaviors, permissions, and values. Because of the radically different living environment in space, no land-based cultures are likely to be a good match for the needs of the voyagers. This is especially true for the risk-management part of culture, which can be labeled “security.”
What is the nearest Earthbound analogue to the possible rigors of multiyear deep spaceflight? In which human endeavors do we isolate small groups of persons for long periods, often in hostile environments, and expect them to perform repetitious and tedious, yet highly technical, tasks with great precision? How do these groups operate without the support of a family structure or the freedom to change their circumstances if boredom or danger grow unbearable?
There are only a few current possibilities that begin to approach the combination of isolation, tedium, danger, and duration, which will characterize interstellar STL travel: nuclear deterrence submarine patrols and over-winter Antarctic stations are two that come to mind. Historically, long-duration sail voyages of exploration also share some similarities with long-duration spaceflight. All are but pale comparisons to the rigors of multiyear spaceflight.
Table 1 offers a comparison of the candidate cultures. The vertical columns represent the cultural and environmental variables which may predict security-culture risk for spaceflight.
Some interesting implications for security culture may be inferred from these examples, disparate as they are.
The mission duration can be considered both the risk window (how long the risks have to manifest) before the ship reaches its destination, as well as a factor that can lead to greater security risk because of morale issues. Longer-duration missions mean more time for something to go wrong and more opportunities for the crew to be negatively affected by their environment.
The crew-size estimates in Table 1 are not intended to be the basis for a discussion about what the minimum sustainable crew size may be, or what amount of unique genetic patterns is needed for perpetuating the race; rather, it is intended to provide a sense of how many potential, deliberate, or accidental, sources of failure points exist in each platform. In this sense, each individual represents a decider who may make good or bad security decisions, be they intentional or unwitting. Therefore, larger crews may equal greater risk.
The relative danger of the operating environments is illustrated by the crew-survival estimates outside their host platform. As survival probability lowers, stresses on cultural standards will increase.
The frequency of communications with the point of origin represents both the ability of the crew to “reach back” for technical consultation as well as individual crew member morale support. Thus, to reach back is a way to renew or sustain culture.
Lastly, the resilience of the platform is an indicator of how robust the systems are when exposed to shock. Relatively fragile physical and logical constructs, such as aircraft or flat networks, can withstand much smaller shocks compared to functional analogues, such as buses or highly segmented networks. The subjective grade of each platform in the table illustrates the resilience during operating conditions. For example, a submarine on the surface with ample reserve buoyancy is far more resilient to collision than a submarine operating a few boat-lengths under the surface. South Pole Station is more resistant to shock in the high summer of mid-December than during the three-month period of total darkness and windchill temperatures below 100 degrees centigrade in July. Our notional spacecraft is more resilient when in space dock at L5, surrounded by contractors and heavy equipment, than it is several light-years beyond Sol’s heliopause. The comparative resilience of the platform is a driver for different cultural norms.
One of the most interesting questions is “how much security is enough?” A strictly military dictatorship might have the most kinetically shockproof culture but can also be viewed as oppressive. Instead, it may be useful to correlate the risk set for each example with the minimum amount of security needed to guarantee survival for the entire platform. Where risks are high, and resilience is low, we can expect security considerations to be higher, and restrictions on personal freedoms and privacy to be correspondingly high. This is consistent with what we can observe to be the case historically on sailing ships as well as on twentieth-century strategic deterrence submarines or the “winter-over” crews on Antarctica. Where the margin of resilience is relatively low, the strictures placed upon individuals are relatively high.
The security-oriented culture for these platforms always depends upon the physical presence of trusted personnel, often in multiples, in locations that house the equipment, which ensures the immediate safety and security of the platform. On a sailing ship, these locations were three: the powder magazine, the ready fresh water supply (called the scuttlebutt), and the captain’s person (for navigation). A single individual could terminate a mission by acting decisively at any of these three points.
Each point represents a critical path node, without which the platform may not only be unable to complete its mission, and whose disruption can lead to the loss of the platform.
On a twentieth-century submarine carrying nuclear missiles, there was a similar calculus. The nuclear powerplant, the communications center, the launcher control center, the missile command center, and the conning deck (from where the sub was commanded) were all manned continuously. Some of the more sensitive spaces included armed watch standers. Again, the heuristic that led to the protection of these spaces above all others was the recognition that the ship’s mission and physical integrity could be catastrophically disrupted from these nodes.
The crew members of both seventeenth- and twentieth-century ships accepted considerable constraints on the amount of personal freedom that they enjoyed. The maritime discipline was imposed because of the element of shared danger, mutual interdependence, and sense of mission. These crews lived in a culture where one watched out for fellow crewmates, not just because they were comrades, but because a single actor held the safety of all the rest in their hands. This culture of interdependence and security was immensely foreign to land-based visitors.
Even the very language used by sailors diverged from shoreside lingo. The reasons for a unique lexicon was practical and based on the security culture. Being able to precisely lay hands on a piece of equipment or perform a technical task in the dark, during moments of extreme stress, was literally a life-or-death capability. What a landlubber regarded as a quaint affectation, was actually a material expression of the specialized culture. On land, we simply connect ropes together. At sea, a sailor may bend two lines together, tie off a hawser, or quickly make a halyard. Each of those are quite distinct and in a worst-case scenario, confusing them could put the ship at risk.
In comparison to systems of ropes, cordage, and wood, our spacecraft is terrifyingly complex and fragile. A specialized framework that assures its safe operation will be needed. Earlier, we recognized that even untrained, but heavily socialized, passengers on commercial aircraft were sufficiently acculturated to the modified social compact present aloft to adopt new security behaviors. Meanwhile, in-flight persons have proven themselves capable of recognizing security issues and self-organizing to restrain dangerous actors.
We have also begun to address specialized language as a part of the security-aware culture on ocean-going vessels. This long-term behavior change permits more precise and efficient communications during an emergency afloat.
Spontaneous security cooperation and specialized language are two parts of a security-culture framework which will be needed
during long-duration spaceflight.
Business consultants delight in the opportunity to delve into “risk management frameworks”—a semi-arcane specialty with its own language and correspondingly high bill rates. Thus, we can use much simpler language to think about how our space-bound framework will need to be supported by a crew culture that voluntarily lives and breathes the principles that protect the ship and crew from all threats, while relinquishing some highly valued aspects of terrestrial culture.
However, for reference, there are several different ways of organizing a set of rules, or governance, to think about and manage the different organizational risks that already exist. An exhaustive categorization of the various types of security is a useful resource to supplement the consideration of security-aware space culture. Terrestrial specialties include information security, supply chain security, personnel security, etc. Table 21 lists some, but by no means all, examples.
Rather than think about our crew culture only in the context of a risk framework that addresses things like information security, physical security, etc., it is more interesting to think about the stages of the mission as well as the cultural baggage that our crew will inevitably bring.
There are three basic phases to the voyage where threat vectors may be characterized differently: Earth-orbit training and construction, near-Earth operations and departure, and extra-solar operations. In the first category, we can stipulate that the security culture of the ship will be overshadowed by extensive, direct support from Earth. In the second category, the ship will be physically separate from Earth, but close enough to permit both communications and even physical intercept. While Earth security culture will still be relevant, the process of the crew detaching from Earth will be well underway. The second phase will be relatively short.
The third category is the focus of this thought experiment. While an open-space intercept from extraterrestrial forces is possible, the likelihood that the engagement features a civilization so closely matched in the level of technology with Earth that our defenses are relevant is vanishingly low; therefore, this scenario is omitted from consideration.
That leaves four fundamental risks whose point of origin may be identified: spontaneous ship-system failure, collision with a celestial object, unwitting human error, or deliberate crew or passenger actions. Our spacers’ culture must be optimized to address these four categories of risk to their mission and themselves. What sorts of behaviors will our crew want to adopt and reinforce? Which Earth-centric behaviors and expectations must be adjusted, or even abandoned, so that these risks might be minimized?
Principle areas of human behavior that drive culture on Earth will have to be adjusted. Some will change naturally in the absence of external drivers. One such example is the set of behaviors and competitions arising from consumer-driven mercantile activity and class-segregated consumption. Some will be persistent, such as behaviors arising from human sexual drive, while others may be exacerbated, such as behaviors arising from expectations of privacy. The mechanisms for conflict resolution will need adjustment to accommodate the realities of constrained shared spaces, long-term proximity to crewmates, and potentially fragile ship systems that aren’t resistant to violence.
Because the consequences of conflict are so severe on a space voyage, the means to avoid social conflict via consensus-driven problem solving is critical. However, because critical systems are relatively accessible, even one disaffected crew member could cause catastrophe. The social safety net, which must sense both internal and external conflicts among the crew, will sharply erode the ability to maintain anything resembling the privacy we enjoy on Earth. In essence, anyone’s business becomes everybody’s business, and thus will necessitate thorough monitoring of behavior patterns. Deviations from established personal shipboard routines must be autonomously detected and human leaders alerted in advance of actual events.
Teamwork is a hallmark of the existing space programs. The stories of the bonds formed between crew members in the Apollo, Space Shuttle, and International Space Station programs are legend. In a fixed-crew complement, the specialization is inevitable, but duplication in skill sets will be important for crew resiliency. Cross-training increases the likelihood that the right people with the right skills are immediately on hand during a localized emergency.
Because of the strong degree of interdependency among the crew, personal respect and accountability will be needed to exceed Earth norms. Examples include expectations regarding minimum levels of fitness, maintenance of diverse and demanding skills sets, dietary practices, and most incendiary of all, religion.
The confrontations possible between incongruent religious viewpoints can generate hostility and violence. Moreover, nearly all religions can spawn fanaticism and extremist behaviors. There are religious conflicts whose origins stretch back more than a millennium—and the impact on individuals in the affected populations have correspondingly profound cultural effects. The large-scale migration of disparate populations into western Europe during the period 2015–2017 and the ensuing unrest and political consequences are an example. Compacting this dynamic into a very small, unescapable habitat will result in undesirable outcomes. This predictable reality means that selection of spacecraft crew and passengers must screen out individuals who cannot subordinate religious priorities to the security culture critical to the spaceflight scenario outlined throughout this article.
Recalling the earlier statement that humans are inherently messy, we can predict that, despite all precautions and efforts to reinforce ship culture, some corrective measures beyond group dynamics and reinforcement will be needed. Requirements will range from denial of routine privileges to physical confinement. The shipboard culture will have to be flexible enough to recognize the need for rules that address behaviors outside the boundaries of what is acceptable.
Crew flexibility must include acceptance of extreme protective measures, when necessary. This is another example where space culture must diverge from Earth culture. The traditional way to resolve intractable problems on Earth is to create a political system that allows humans to make fundamental changes to their social construct, often in response to changes in their environment, or access to resources.
Since the voyage will feature relatively static conditions, big changes to the social construct during the long, yet finite, voyage may be counterproductive. This may require the biggest cultural shift of all: Political organizations and sectarian divisions among the crew must be rejected for the duration of the voyage. This could be particularly hard for Westerners to accept given their political tradition of self-determination and individualism.
Table 3 considers selected elements of terrestrial culture, summarizing issues and offering adjustment vectors for each cultural norm touched upon in the foregoing discussion.
In short, if we use humans and not machines to shepherd our race to the nearest stars, then we will do so by embracing the risks of using messy, unpredictable, and fallible humans. However, those spaceship crews will have to drastically adjust their cultures to optimize the likelihood of safely reaching their destination. The adjustments to familiar cultural norms around relationships, politics, reproductive activity (even of the recreational variety), discipline, and language will be significant and mandatory. The changes would be reasonably viewed as totalitarian and unacceptable in nearly any other environment. In total, these adjustments will form a new, space-based cultural framework that will seem quite foreign to ground-siders…
…but that framework will become the daily environment for Homo stellaris, or the humans who live between the stars.
1 The author does not endorse any of these options; the list is for information only.
The Smallest of Things
Catherine L. Smith
A science fiction reader from an early age, Cathe Smith grew up wondering about alien planets. Since she couldn’t study aliens in college, she studied insects, which most people would argue is close enough. With a ba
ckground in insect molecular genetics and evolutionary systematics, she has been a consultant to numerous science fiction authors looking to create interesting aliens. After doing that often enough, she decided to try her hand at writing her own stories.
There are a few greetings I have received when walking into my lab that woke me up faster than the first cup of coffee:
“The lab is on fire.”
“The ceiling collapsed.”
“The good news is no one died.”
This time, my lab manager, Dr. Tara Hauff, went for a subtler approach. “Doc Morgan, take a look at this data—it looks…weird.”
“Which data?” I asked wearily. We had collected so much of it since the ship touched down that I was starting to see it in my dreams.
Tara walked over to the main computer consoles for the lab as she continued. “You know how we noticed some small anomalies in the orbital scans? I think you were right about throwing out our assumptions and working from the ground up.”
She spoke as she pointed toward a split screen displaying two different chemical readouts. “The one on the right is from some lettuce in the greenhouse, showing the standard four peaks indicating the four DNA bases of Earth. The one on the left is from one of the vegetation samples collected outside the glass yesterday.”
The graph she pointed to had six peaks.
“Does this indicate what I think it does?” I asked. “That we’re dealing with two additional DNA bases—alien ones at that?” My brain whirled, no coffee required.
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