Are Race and Sex Differences Relevant for Space Travel and Exploration?

This is part of a long essay written in response to David Reich’s book Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (2018). The full essay is here.

Astronaut Schweichart experienced interpersonal conflict aboard Apollo 9 and correctly predicted that as future missions get longer and the crews larger, more intense interpersonal hostilities would occur. [10-day mission, March 1969]

– Captain Daniel L. Collins (USAF)

The conditions human beings of all races and both sexes will experience in space exploration and long-term settlements on the Moon, Mars and beyond will amount to another experiment testing whether race and sex differences are social and political constructs, since conditions en route to the Moon and further afield, and in any long-term settlement, will be the same for all crew members regardless of race or sex.

A particularly exhaustive account of the psychological problems experienced by US and Soviet astronauts in and after return from space has been compiled by Captain Daniel L. Collins (USAF) (Collins 1985 & 2003). With long-duration space missions to Mars and prolonged stays on the Moon likely within the next decade, crew selection, cohesion, and compatibility are mission-critical. Writing in 1985, Collins noted that “Psychological compatibility has been a recurring problem during the short-duration space missions” but “no present attempts are being made to define the desirable personal characteristics of the optimum space crew.” (Collins, 44)

The problem was known to be serious decades ago. For example, Collins reports that American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts, all of whom had been subjected to severe and strictly applied selection criteria, frequently manifested “poor judgement, belligerence, interpersonal dissension, irritability with ground managers, and gross violations of crew discipline, which could have resulted in tragedy.” (Collins, 44) So bad was the breakdown in interpersonal relations on Apollo 13 that ground controllers considered aborting the mission.

Then there are problems post-flight, arising from a complete reevaluation of all spiritual and philosophical values: a cosmically-induced moment of Pauline conversion (or something like it). Veterans will grasp the point: An 18-year-old US Marine who survived Iwo Jima whole in body did not return home to Idaho unchanged in mind and spirit. For a short lunar mission that ends with the safe return of the astronauts to Earth, this is merely a deep personal event, but the consequences for all crew members after a long flight to Mars, with months ahead on the planet, followed by a flight home, may be far more serious and unpredictable. It may well prove to be the complete vindication of the thoughts of Hjalmar Söderberg on the insuperable loneliness of the human soul. Only the most self-sufficient would not be crushed and would not succumb to despair. Would they still regard Earth as home? Would they prefer to end their lives on the Red Planet rather than return to Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot?

In his analysis of crew selection and questions of cohesion and compatibility, Collins does not specifically mention race but, given the salience of cohesion and compatibility, questions of race (and sex) cannot be ignored. For example, Collins reports that in crew selection for the Mercury and Apollo programs and Space Shuttle, the minimum IQ was 132 and the emphasis was on mathematical and spatial reasoning (Collins, 54). Taking into account that the mean black IQ is 85 (USA), the implications for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in crew selection are clear. And the implications are not just a matter of IQ. For certain tasks, it may be possible to reduce the minimum IQ limit to accommodate blacks, but considerations of temperament and personality differences will remain. Collins reports that in crew selection “Behavior indicative of a deliberate, rather than an impulsive person was also deemed critical.” (Collins, 54) Blacks have much higher levels of impulsivity than whites.

If all-white Soviet and American crews have had severe breakdowns in interpersonal relations in space, it would be folly to assume that racially diverse crews, given the nature of American society, would not manifest the same problems and stresses, possibly even violence. Even if any racial problems do not exist in space, news from Earth has the power to ignite them. How would black and white crew members on a lunar base have reacted to the news of George Floyd’s death in police custody and the subsequent looting and rioting?

Meanwhile, space-medicine research continues. The NASA Twins Study (Garrett-Bakelman et al, 2019, 1-20) provided valuable data which were derived from the study of male monozygotic twins. One of the twins spent 340 days on board the International Space Station (ISS), while the other remained on Earth. The NASA Twins Study identified 10 bodily functions that were affected by long-term space flight: (i) body mass and nutrition, (ii) telomere length regulation, (iii) maintenance of genome stability, (iv) vascular health, (v) ocular structural adaptations, (vi) transcriptional and metabolic changes, (vii) epigenetic shifts, (viii) lipid level alterations, (ix) microbiome responses, and (x) cognitive function. (Garrett-Bakelman et al., 14)

“Continuous high levels of astronaut cognitive performance,” noted the authors of the NASA Twins Study, “are critical for mission success.” (Garrett-Bakelman et al., 12) Worryingly, they also noted that there was a reduction in cognitive performance in speed and accuracy which lasted for up to 6 months after the end of the mission. (Garret-Bakelman et al., 13) For a flight to Mars and extended exploration on the planet, the implications of this decline are especially serious, since if the negative effects on cognitive performance arising from a long flight to Mars cannot be mitigated, or ideally eliminated, the astronauts will face the severe challenges of landing and establishing a base for immediate survival at the moment when they may not be functioning at their cognitive best. Does this decline affect all races and sexes equally? Detailed planning will anticipate and overcome some of the likely problems, but space exploration, especially a mission to Mars, is fraught with risk and dangers, and not all can be foreseen and countered. In an emergency, it will be high cognitive performance and initiative that will save the day.

Because there are well documented racial differences in IQ, and in susceptibility to certain medical conditions and differences in responses to treatments on Earth, it is plausible that Caucasoids, Negroids, and Mongoloids will react differently to the conditions and stressors of long-term space travel, exploration missions, and its specific medical problems (known and unknown). I could find no published material on how space travel will affect different races and women, though in a follow up study to the NASA Twins Study, the authors conceded that “there are likely individual differences in susceptibility to space flight environmental stressors” (Sheena I. Dev et al., 2024, 12). The authors also considered the relevance of long-term stays on Antarctica for understanding the medical problems of space travel, referring to an Indian study, and noting, somewhat cryptically, that ”a subset of individuals in these settings appear to be more vulnerable to decrements in aspects of attention, memory, or visuospatial abilities, including those who report depressive symptoms.” (Sheena I. Dev et al., 2)

The subset in question was a group of 20 Indian males who were examined to establish the effects of over-wintering in Antarctica. The Indian authors were clear enough that race had to be considered:

Psychological research in Antarctica provides insight into how individuals (and groups) function in an extreme and isolated milieu. However, while interpreting and comparing published data, the racial, psychosocial, educational and cultural differences of expedition teams needs to be considered. (Madhumita Premkumar et al., 2013, 2, emphasis added)

That Madhumita Premkumar et al. have highlighted racial, psychosocial, educational and cultural differences suggests that these differences may have caused problems among the crew members, and that the violent incidents reported in the South African Antarctic station (winter 2025) are not isolated events. Crew compatibility will therefore be a crucial consideration for long-term space travel (Mars and beyond). A racially diverse crew might function reasonably well during short stays on the Moon and provide lots of diversophile propaganda immediately transmitted back to Earth for consumption on social media, but differences in racial physiology and psychology, and conflicts in the depths of space could completely undermine the success of any expedition and long-term exploration. Spaceships manned by racially homogenous and same-sex crews might be highly desirable, though even were those preconditions satisfied, there is no guarantee that problems among crew members will not arise, and if they do, that they can be resolved.

I take it for granted that NASA and other US agencies are fully cognizant of potential problems arising from race and sex differences, but are, for the time being, remaining silent — though a recent article in The Telegraph described known higher risks for women, such as radiation-induced cancers and loss of plasma volume. Matters of competence can be obfuscated and evaded on Earth, however clumsily, but planning for future space missions must be based on the knowledge that homo sapiens was created by genes and evolution. In the depths of space, any attempt to impose the liberation biology of race and sex as social and political constructs will lead to catastrophe.

In the UK, early coverage of the Artemis II mission by the state media platform, the BBC, promoted as the first “crewed” mission to the Moon since the Apollo programme, confirms the intention to push diversity above all else, with months of diversity agitprop to come. While I am implacably opposed to the ideology of diversity, neither the BBC diversity-propagandists nor I are in space, exposed to the risks and dangers. I am pleased that the crew of Artemis II, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen and Christina Koch, have safely returned to our Pale Blue Dot in what appears to have been a successful mission: ad astra per ardua et mentem.

References

Captain Daniel L. Collins (USAF), ‘Psychological Issues Relevant to Astronaut Selection for Long-Duration Space Flight: A Review of the Literature’, This article was first published in 1985 and reprinted in Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments, volume 7, 1, 2003, pp.43-67.

Francine E. Garrett-Bakelman et al, ‘The NASA Twins Study: A Multidimensional Analysis of a Year-Long Human Spaceflight’, Science, 364, 2019, pp.1-20.

Sheena I. Dev et al, ‘Cognitive Performance in ISS Astronauts on 6-Month Low Earth Orbit Missions’, Frontiers in Psychology, 20th November 2024, pp.1-14

Madhumita Premkumar et al, ‘Circadian Levels of Serum Melatonin and Cortisol in relation to Changes in Mood, Sleep, and Neurocognitive Performance, Spanning a Year of Residence in Antarctica’, Neuroscience Journal, volume 2013, pp.1-10