In space, no one can hear you scream.
But there’s always a shrink on call, back on Earth, to listen to stressed-out astronauts cry if they need to.
“I could bitch at him, cry with him, whatever,” said retired astronaut Clayton “AstroClay” Anderson of the long-distance psychologist who helped him when he spent 152 days aboard the International Space Station in 2007. “He had my back. He could try to effect change [with NASA] and talk to my family if need be.”
NASA’s Earth-bound shrinks might be busy right now, with astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore “stuck” at the ISS because of spacecraft malfunctions.
As of August 10, the two will have spent their 66th day trapped aboard the International Space Station — a mission that was supposed to be just 10 days long.
NASA announced Wednesday that Wilmore and Williams may have to remain in place until February 2025.
Two more astronauts are set to travel to the ISS as early as September on the CrewDragon, made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The four would work together on the ISS until February, then travel home in the CrewDragon.
Remarkably, Anderson said, there is not any real training in terms of what happens if you get stuck, despite a two-year prep course before setting out for the International Space Station.
“I never thought about being stranded; I thought, ‘Hey, I have a job to do. I’m up here for a certain amount of time. That time is variable,’” the 65-year-old told The Post. “I don’t remember getting much training or psychology in terms of how you deal with it.”
Astronauts are “trained to do many repairs by following procedures,” Anderson said, and it helps if they are halfway-decent plumbers, too.
“There was a time when the Russian-made toilet broke on a Friday night and Mission Control in Russia didn’t come back on until Saturday,” he recalled of the ISS. “So [we] had to survive overnight without the toilet.”
In the meantime, he relied on a makeshift anti-gravity toilet called a Soyuz. “I also had Apollo poop bags” — literally, a bag meant to be sealed and stored in a box — “but I got no training in how to use those bags. Ick!”
As for repairs, Anderson said, “You get instructions for fixing it the next morning and then hope that the right parts were [on board]. I think we got it fixed in a day. But sometimes the parts have to be sent up.”
Remarkably, transport time for supplies can be as little as four hours.
There’s not a worry of going hungry, because cargo ships ferry fresh clothing and food supplies to the ISS every couple of months from the US. (Williams and Wilmore cannot hitch rides home on the haulers, though, because they are not graded for human transport.)
But sometimes the cupboards can run “down to the bare bones,” Anderson said. “There were certain dishes on the Space Station that everyone hated. Tofu teriyaki and tofu with chili flavor were two that I would never touch.”
A collaboration between the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada, the ISS launched in 1998 and is now used for scientific research by 15 countries.
NASA describes it as being “larger than a six-bedroom house with six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, a gym and a 360-degree bay window.” It has electricity via solar cells and a small galley kitchen that features a fridge, hot and cold running water, and a food heater.
While medical supplies on board are more advanced than your average first-aid kit, they still sound more mundane than you might expect. Anderson recalled gear for sutures and intubation, and an intravenous fluid kit with syringes, in addition to Imodium A-D and sleeping pills. In a crisis, astronauts would be guided through care by a doctor on the ground.
“I’m sure that Suni and Butch have medical and psychological support people while they’re up there,” said Anderson, who had both at his disposal.
And sometimes astronauts are medical experts. Frank Rubio was a flight surgeon when he was selected in 2017 to begin his two-year training for a 2022 stay at the ISS with two Russian cosmonauts.
It was meant to be a 180-day mission — but turned into 371, setting the record for the longest spaceflight by an American, due to a radiator leak caused by a meteorite or space junk hitting the Russian spacecraft meant to bring the astronauts home.
Rubio told NPR about going a little stir-crazy from “being in a very enclosed space” where “the only privacy you have is about the size of a small phone-booth.” Contrary to NASA, he described the ISS as being like a “two- to three-bedroom house composed entirely of hallways,”
Being stuck in space takes a physical toll. As Rubio told CNN, “We’re not walking, we’re not bearing our own weight [while in space], so it will be from two- to six-months before I essentially say that I feel normal.”
NASA is careful not to use the words “stuck” or “trapped” or “stranded.” During a press conference in June about Wilmore and Williams, Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, stated, “Our plan is to return then home on Starliner and to return them home at the right time.”
The fact that Williams and Wilmore’s faulty return vessel is made by Boeing — a company that has gotten loads of bad press over the course of 2024 due to a laundry list of mechanical and human failures — “gives you pause,” Anderson said. “But the airplane division is different from the space division.”
Steve Sitch, NASA’s Commercial Crew Program manager said this week, “In the last few weeks we have decided to make sure we have that capability there [the SpaceX option], as our community, I would say, got more and more uncomfortable.”
It was known even before blastoff, that the Boeing Starliner craft that carried Williams and Wilmore to the ISS had a small helium leak.
Additional leaks in the vessel’s plumbing were found and repaired from the ground, according to CBS News, but even more problems came to light after the Starliner docked at ISS, including malfunctioning thrusters and helium leaking from the propulsion system.
Anderson, author of “The Ordinary Spaceman,” said the two are likely not scared at this point.
“Butch and Suni were test pilots before they became astronauts, he said. “I’m speculating here, but I think part of them is saying, ‘We’re test pilots, we can handle this, we’re not afraid.’”
Even without an unexpected delay, going into space for extended periods of time can wreak havoc on relationships with spouses and children.
“My wife and I, we talked about our ability to sustain if the mission extended by a month or so,” he said of his wife Susan, who also worked for the space program. “But if it had been three months or four months, we’d have gotten into tougher territory. I can’t speak to individual family situations, but I imagine that [Butch’s] family is getting a little antsy. His kids are older … but they must miss having their dad on the ground.”
Wilmore, 62, and his wife are from middle Tennessee and have two daughters. A retired US Navy captain, he was selected to be an astronaut in 2000.
Williams, 58, is married and is a federal police officer in Oregon. Prior to being selected as an astronaut, in 1998, she had been a naval test pilot.
Anderson met Williams in 1998, while they were both training to be astronauts, and imagines she “is loving every day she gets to be in space. I don’t imagine she or Butch have any panic in their sites right now. They’re probably just working hard, having a good time and trusting the system. It’s kind of fun being up there.”
Anderson, who is now CEO of the SAC Aerospace Museum in his hometown of Ashland, Nebraska, remembers missing his family while in space.
But, he admitted, that wasn’t the case for everyone. “We had astronauts who loved going to Star City [the Russian space training center northeast of Moscow] to train. That way they didn’t have to deal with any family issues.”
