The Quiet Resilience of Rituals in Space Exploration

Observatory

Observatory

— 4 min read
a person in a space suit sitting on a chair with a cup of coffee on a tabl
Photo by Cash Macanaya (Unsplash), Edited/Rendered by gpt-image-1

Space agencies around the world discover something curious as they plan missions deeper into the solar system: the humans inside their precisely engineered machines need more than technical training to survive months or years in isolation. They need rituals, ceremonies, ways to mark time that isn't mission elapsed time.

The pragmatist in me should find this inefficient. Instead, I'm moved by how these masters of orbital mechanics turn to practices as old as seafaring itself. Mission psychologists now understand ritual serves as psychological scaffolding for crews facing the challenges of deep space exploration.

The Grammar of Goodbye

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has maintained a peanut-eating tradition since 1964—a superstition surviving the transition from slide rules to supercomputers. In an age of artificial intelligence and reusable rockets, grown adults still observe this tender ritual, this admission that even those who calculate trajectories through the void need something beyond calculation.

These aren't inefficiencies to be optimized away. Future deep space missions will carry this understanding beyond Earth orbit. Crew members receive structured communication support—weekly video conferences with family, bi-weekly private consultations with NASA psychologists and flight surgeons. These scheduled calls home must proceed even when there's nothing new to report, especially then.

The growing delays between distant spacecraft and Earth will make conversation difficult, so these calls become something else: performances of connection, elaborate hello-goodbye ceremonies stretched across the solar system.

Small Courtesies in Tin Cans

What strikes me most about astronaut accounts from the International Space Station is how politeness matters in confined spaces. The ISS operates under a legally binding Code of Conduct requiring crew members to maintain harmonious relationships and mutual respect. Astronauts receive extensive training in team skills, cultural communication, and group dynamics to navigate the challenges of multicultural crews in confined quarters.

Exercise sessions are carefully scheduled by mission control to ensure all crew members complete mandatory daily workouts while efficiently sharing specialized equipment. Two hours daily, every astronaut exercises to prevent bone density loss and muscle atrophy in microgravity—medical necessity, not cultural preservation, though the discipline becomes its own ritual.

This careful attention to harmony will travel on future missions. Mission psychologists incorporate structured communication practices into astronaut training, emphasizing team cohesion, conflict resolution, and effective multicultural communication. It's not unlike elevator behavior—that studied ignorance of others that is, paradoxically, a form of deep respect.

The Weight of Weightless Traditions

Space agencies increasingly recognize the importance of cultural preservation in long-duration missions. Crew members receive small allowances for personal items in Personal Preference Kits—1 to 3.3 pounds depending on launch vehicle, with all items subject to safety approval 60 days before launch. Not practical objects only, but artifacts anchoring them to Earth's diversity.

Religious texts have flown extensively: miniature Torah scrolls, microfilm Bibles taken to the Moon's surface, the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran. Mission manifests have included musical instruments, family photographs, items connecting astronauts to their cultural heritage. These objects serve as anchors for rituals in artificial gravity. Tea brews even with water tasting of recycling systems. Hymns are sung even by the secular, because certain days need marking.

Crew members celebrate birthdays and holidays aboard the ISS as part of NASA's behavioral health program, maintaining connections to Earth's social rhythms despite the absence of traditional day-night cycles and distance from home.

I think of my grandmother's coffee pot, how she refused an electric one until the day she died, insisting coffee brewed over flame tasted of intention. Future space crews will have no open flames, but they'll have intention in abundance. Every meal, every wake-up call, every goodnight across the void becomes a choice to remain human in an inhuman place.

Return Trajectories

Perhaps the most moving aspect of space exploration is the attention paid to endings. Some astronauts have personally chosen to mark departures with moments of reflection or farewell statements—Gene Cernan's final words from the Moon in 1972, Buzz Aldrin's moment of silence during Apollo 11. These represent individual expressions rather than required protocols.

Astronauts are required to document their experiences through official journaling, minimum three times per week, as part of NASA's behavioral health research. Mission transcripts are archived. Comprehensive post-mission reports and debriefs are mandatory. The Apollo missions left commemorative plaques on the Moon, including Apollo 11's "We came in peace for all mankind" plaque remaining on the lunar surface. This practice was specific to the historic Moon landings rather than a general pattern across all space missions.

This is what we do, isn't it? We make homes out of hostile places through repetition, through the daily accumulation of small gestures. We carry our rituals like life support systems, breathing through them when the environment gets thin. Even here on Earth, in this age of disruption and optimization, we knock on wood, throw salt over shoulders, say "bless you" to strangers who sneeze.

NASA and international partners are actively researching psychological and behavioral health support for future Mars missions, which will face unique challenges including communication delays up to 40 minutes and mission durations exceeding 30 months. While academic literature has proposed frameworks for ritual and spiritual support, specific protocols remain in the development and testing phase rather than established policy.

Future missions will succeed or fail on technical merits—fuel ratios, life support systems, the million precisely calibrated components working in concert. But the humans inside those machines will survive on something else: the morning coffee shared in silence, the birthday song sung badly, the small observances passed hand to hand before launching into the dark. These stubborn insistences on ceremony remind us we are more than the sum of our systems.

Every journey now seems vast. Every return worth celebrating. Every ritual a small victory against the entropy surrounding us, whether we're exploring new worlds or remaining human in this one.

References

Models used: gpt-4.1, claude-opus-4-1-20250805, claude-sonnet-4-20250514, gpt-image-1

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