Space madness: the dreaded disease that never was

Psychiatrists working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the late-1950s feared the worst of the men they examined to be America's first astronauts: that they would be impulsive, suicidal, sexually aberrant thrill-seekers. The examiners, though, were surprised – and a little disappointed – when tests revealed the would-be astronauts to be sane, poised professionals able to absorb extraordinary stresses. A Space Age malady with no incidence among human populations, ‘space madness’ is the stuff of Hollywood: a cultural manifestation of popular fears of a lonely, dehumanizing, and claustrophobic future among the stars.