Technological determinism goes aloft: notes on the human - machine issue in outer space exploration

With the development of long-duration space missions that increasingly demanded the maintenance and repair of technological devices, technical specialists came to be included as part of the crews. In contrast to test pilots, engineers might feel more comfortable with high automation and start to look for new objectives of spaceflight beyond basic survival and space manoeuvring. Valentin Lebedev, a Saluyt 7 flying engineer who spent 211 days in space in 1982, was instrumental in raising the question of the role of humans in outer space endeavours. The cosmonaut estimated that space flyers devoted only one- fourteenth of the total time in mission to productive activity such as scientific research, while the rest was spent on maintaining their own existence [Gerovitch 2006, 135]. His related proposal was to rethink and enlarge the scientific (meaningful) content of spaceflight [Roscosmos TV... web]. One proposed solution to the problem of space mission efficiency was automation. As argued by another cosmonaut, Konstantin Feoktistov, `No craft is designed to carry dead weight. It must have a payload that performs a kind of useful work... Every operation that can be automated on board a spaceship should be automated' [Gerovitch 2006, 136].

Undoubtedly, a distribution of influence between different occupational branches (i.e. military, civil aviation, engineering bureaus, scientific institutions) played a significant role in the development of the Soviet / Russian space program [Gerovitch 2006; 2015]; however, it can be argued that technological progress allowed the integration of engineers into the flying community as well as their anticipation and request for further automation. Moreover, activities of space flyers increasingly resembled machine-like logic, problematizing the very division of humans and machines. The section that follows provides a theoretical framework for further analysis of human - machine relationships in spaceflight. I introduce the notion of ethical commodification suggested by Albert Borgmann.

Borgmann [Borgmann 2010, 27] defined technology as tools and the `procedures' associated with their utilization. The philosopher emphasized the particularity of modern technologies that emerged with the development of the market economy and wide industrialization of Western countries as refashioning humans' relationships with reality, raising new questions about the moral and ontological order. The main concern of the analytical discussion is the process of commodification that can be understood in economic and ethical terms. In an economic sense, commodity refers to a good that naturally exists or can be manufactured, but which is unavoidably brought to `a market' for sale [Borgmann 2010, 28]. Commodification is a historical process that impacts the human condition in a variety of ways. It gradually established itself in industrial countries alongside the initially non-economic sphere of intimate relationships and public goods. A strong, but actively debated intellectual tradition exists that links economic commodification with impoverishment.

Ethical commodification plays out along with or separately from economic commodification. When `[a] thing or a practice is morally commodified.it is detached from contexts of engagement with a time, a place, and a community' [Borgmann 2010, 29]. This `detachment' from the significant aspects of social reality is typically viewed to be impoverishing, though it might be justified by prospective benefits manifesting themselves in the form of freedoms, justice or well-being. In the case of technology, economic and moral commodifications do not always accompany one another. Thus, while agriculture is an economic domain, it is unimaginable without reference to the specific places and people involved in farming as well as to a specific biological rhythm. From another perspective, internet content can be promoted as non-economic goods while being decoupled from situated bonds and responsibilities. An easy access to and withdrawal from communication sites problematizes the very nature of community that they attempt to construct. In this sense, `[electronic devices and goods have always already been detached' [Borgmann 2010, 30].

Commodification differentiates `the nature of reality' from `norms of conduct':

In the eighteenth century England, bread was not an object that required the mechanism of the market to establish its value, norms of social justice to judge its distribution, standards of nutrition to fix its composition, and rules of dieting to direct its consumption. The sight of bread provoked gratitude. If it was entirely made of wheat, it was evidence of wealth. Sitting down to break it was an occasion of rest and grace. Bread was the focal point of a context of work and of working together - during harvest time when all able-bodied people had to help, in the barn when the threshers did their rhythmic flailing, at the mill when wheat was entrusted to the miller, at the village oven where all families took their loaves to have them baked [Borgmann 2010, 30].

In `pre-technological times', the reality of social life was stable and intelligible. People's relationships with their material surroundings found direct expression in emotional and bodily experiences. However, with industrialization and marketization, objects and activities lost their situated character, turning instead into products of rationalized and technologized processes. Reality became separated from moral obligations and concerns; commodified goods turned mystical by the idea of machinery, as ever-present, immediate, unproblematic and effortlessly accessible. In this respect, `[m]oral commodification is always about mechanization' [Borgmann 2010, 31]. The commodification of bread is associated with the mechanization of its production that became a part of a larger process of industrialization. The contemporary tendency is to foster the mystical aspect by making machinery as less evident as possible and the commodity as appealing as possible. A personal computer is a telling example. With its size dramatically reduced, the major concern nowadays is to keep computers ergonomically adequate for human use [Borgmann 2010].

Technological development goes hand in hand with a desire for comfort and, in turn, facilitates ethical commodification of technology. Presently, cars and computers are reaching a level of sophistication that precludes the possibility of a lay-user intervention in the form of repair or improvement. Here, a `device paradigm' comes into play: humans might accept the mystery of machinery to satisfy the desire for comfort, representing a form of `moral consumption' [Borgmann 2010, 33]. With regard to personal computers, the following is argued:

Typically also, the exponential increase in the power of computers was directed, not to challenge human discipline and skills in newly created ways but to make the commoditie s of information and entertainment more instantly, ubiquitously, safely and easily available. Computers, to be sure, are skillfully [sic] used by highly trained experts... But such expert use is rarely just an exercise in the pursuit of excellence. It usually serves to improve the machinery of technology or to produce commodities of entertainment [Borgmann 2010, 32].

Highly technologized societies can be relatively coherent but simultaneously artificial, since the foundation of existence is substituted by morals. Following this logic, a trip in a highly automated car can no longer be clearly differentiated from an evening spent in one's living room: air conditioning, broadcasting devices and other attributes of comfort are available in the modern car. Experiences of a car trip, then, lack the particularity of the context as well as specific references to the environmental and interpersonal condition. In this way, high-tech society cultivates `disengagement' that is justified by striving towards escape from the difficulties and discomforts of daily life. But technologically ensured freedom might eventually turn into a devastation of human relationships and degradation of individual agency and capabilities. The reversal of ethical commodification, according to Borgmann [Borgmann 1984; 2010], may involve the `destandardization of goods' and the restoration of `life-worlds' that would promote one's connections with time, place and community.

Technologization is unavoidably accompanied by commodification [Borgmann 2010]. In this part of the paper, I draw on the narratives accumulated in the framework of long-duration Soviet / Russian space missions to account for some of the possible strategies for overcoming alienation. Although Borgmann's theory was built on observations over market-driven social systems, technology (and not the economy) is viewed to be the main shaping factor in social development . As ethical commodification is not necessarily bound to the realm of economic exchange, this concept can therefore be applied to the analysis of non-market societies as well.

The following presentation does not aim to exhaust the whole range of approaches to the decommodification of technology in spaceflight. Rather, it demonstrates that variation in human - machine interactional practices might reflect the plurality of entities accommodated under the label of technology. While some scholars associate space technology primarily with advanced (typically digital) devices [Gerovitch 2006; 2014; Mindell 2008], others include into the technological family procedures and supporting materials [e.g. Borgmann 2010; Hersch 2009]. In this study, I additionally differentiate between hardware (technological constructions) and software (analogue or digital programs), claiming that ethical decommodification of software might be a more challenging task due to its disembodied character.

As is known, the Soviet / Russian space program turned to long-duration space missions in the early 1970s after the exhaustion of mainly unrealized lunar projects [Gerovitch 2014]. A number of space stations were put on low orbit, including several Salyut space stations (1971-1991) and the orbital complex Mir (1996-2001). A large-size construction, the space station was equipped with a smart life support system, allowing the accommodation of cosmonauts for weeks and months. The long-term stay motivated the space flyers to develop certain relationships with the technological construction. Some could define the station as a `home', others went even further to humanize it. Yuri Usachjov, an engineer who served two missions (in total, 275 days) at the orbital complex Mir in the mid-1990s, reported in his autobiography on cosmonauts' reflections over their established bonds with the space station [Usachjov 2004]:

Then the conversation went on about the station and an interesting thought sounded: she (the station) has a very specific lifetime, unfortunately, much shorter than even half of human life i.e., less than 30-40 years. We are eager to meet her, we will live with her a little and leave... And we are eager to return here again, we do not know. It is similar at the same time to the fate of domestic animals, whose age is shorter than the human, and to parting with old parents - when you say goodbye, leaving for a long time, you do not know for sure whether you will find them alive or not on your next visit.

The word station (stancija) has a female gender in the Russian language, and this linguistic feature facilitates the `humanization' of the technological construction. In the extract presented, the station no longer appears as an anonymous shell temporarily sheltering the space flyers, but as a family member whose lifespan is compared with that of humans. Moreover, the station is shirked to the size of a `pat' that provokes emotional attachment and soft paternalism. It is the one who is unmovable and dependent, while humans exercise agency (to stay or / and leave) and control. It is always there, in a known location, waiting to be found and attended to. In this way, shared time, space and community had been (re)constructed.

The materiality of hardware eases ethical decommodification. Comparison of the station with the aged body of a parent triggers an emotional response and eventually restores engagement. Another example of this move comes from the cosmonaut's reflection over landing in a Soyuz descent capsule [Usachjov 2004]:

And as the culmination, the shooting of the lid of the parachute container and the release of a parachute. Lord, how `iron' - our descent vehicle - stands such treatment. We are beginning to be `tormented' by the atmosphere with strong lateral overloads. This is some kind of complex movement, but it feels like someone very big holds our descent vehicle for strings of a parachute line and tries to restrain our fall into the atmosphere.

In this episode, a parallel is drawn between the iron body of the space capsule and human flesh that can feel pain and suffer. The power balance is reversed this time, with recognition of the `caring' role of technology. Thus, a rigid and technical division of labour and roles, typical for industrial society, is destabilized. Care is placed in the centre of human - machine relationships.

Upon his return to Mir, Usachjov finds it aged like an `old lady', as ten years is a long period of time in space. The cosmonauts wonder how the station survives the pressure and temperature fluctuations [Usachjov 2004]. This attitude of humanization might be found in the early long-term missions as well. Cosmonaut Vladimir Savinyh participated in a repairer mission to Salyut 7 in 1988 after the orbital complex, flying in automatic regime, stopped responding to ground control, titled his autobiographical book devoted to this life episode Notes from the Dead Station (1999). In the book, the whole mission is framed in terms of reanimation of the `living body' of the station, returning function to its different systems as living organs [Savinyh 1999]. Technological devices are not just humanized but, at times, personalized in the cosmonauts' autobiographical materials. Usachjov [Usachjov 2004] reported on a discussion that took place during his first mission around Progress resupply vehicles. One of the cosmonauts suggested replacing formal numerical identification by names of characters from popular movies and fairy tales.

A space station is a huge piece of hardware to which cosmonauts, by virtue of the situation, had to develop a certain attitude. As demonstrated above, the orbital complex might become included in the web of symbolic bonds by acknowledging shared materiality and temporality of existence. In this way, the cosmonauts reconstructed intimacy with the technological environment. Borgmann [Borgmann 1984, 207] used the notion of `practices of engagement' that enable recontextualization of objects and events.

Decommodification of software is a more complex process. Cosmonaut Valentin Lebedev, who was among the first space flyers adapting to the Soyuz T launch vehicle, described the initial frustration over on-board digital computers in his 1988 book, Diary of a Cosmonaut: 211 Days in Space. His first impression was of a passenger-like role that contrasted with flyers' previous relatively restricted - but still notable - involvement in navigation procedures. All calculations, adjustments and manipulations aboard Soyuz T were performed by software, and the cosmonaut needed only to start the program and supervise it. As with previous version of Soyuz, space flyers were expected to interpret data, make judgments or anticipations over a situation and decide on possible actions. Some manoeuvers were especially demanding; for example, docking could generate fifty-three potential problems. Cosmonauts trained on those procedures for months in order to successfully master techniques, a condition that fostered cosmonauts' self-esteem, dignity, self-confidence and particular relationships with the technological devices. As reported by Lebedev [Lebedev 1988, 205], `In it (in old Soyuz) I felt an intelligent man and in control'. Human and machine were co-situated in space-time and linked by the chain of interactions. Digitalization led to the `black boxing' of devices: what was happening inside the computer became mainly unknown and unintelligible, at least in the beginning [Lebedev, 1988, 205-206]: