About this episode

The episode explores the field of space psychology and its implications for pilots and astronauts under duress.

What can psychologists do the make pilots and astronauts’ decision making better under duress? Can we anticipate the psychological issues of planned long distance space missions to Mars? How can we shift the shame culture for pilots and astronauts around reporting unidientified anomolous phenomena? In this episode we have the unique field of Space psychology to look into; So we discuss the psychology of military pilots and astronauts working under such extreme conditions; and the intuitive skill sets developed under such high pressure, split second decision situations; we discuss the cognitive engineering required to match the design of instruments to the cognitive needs of the pilots and astronauts; we get into alternatives methods of expertise exchange apart from the usual text book approach which have had extraordinary decision making results for pilot and astronaut performance. We also discuss the issues for pilots around reporting of UFO encounters, and the implications for space psychology of the new bout of main stream interest following the New York Times 2017 expose of military incidents. So who better to help us understand the minds of pilots and astronauts than space…

People in this episode

Host: Freddy Drabble

Guest: Iya Whiteley

Topics covered

• space psychology
• decision making
• long distance space missions
• UFO reporting
• cognitive engineering
• pilot training

Keywords

• space psychology
• decision making
• UFO encounters
• cognitive engineering
• pilot training
• Mars missions
• psychological issues

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Centre of Space Medicine, European Space Agency, Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, UCL, New York Times

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