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Would you like to live on Mars for a year?
Learn more about what it’s like living in space.
Being forced into isolation and confinement creates a number of potentially stressful demands. However, we might be able to learn a thing or two about coping with these demands, from people who choose a life in such settings.
Despite the glorified image of being an astronaut, isolation and confinement remains a challenge for the star sailors that live above us. Demands associated with isolation and confinement are known as a red risk for long duration human spaceflight, which means they have the highest “likelihood of occurrence and the severity of their impact on human health, performance in mission, and long term quality of life”.
Astronauts know that by choosing to fly in space, they are going to have to live, work and play under isolated and confined conditions. Clearly, being a well trained astronaut flying in space is different to being thrust into another pandemic related lockdown. Yet instead of trivialising what we are going through, we can look to astronauts’ experiences for tips to improve our own situation.