Healing Space | Chandrayaan 3: Psychology of the moon landing

Scientific expeditions that capture the collective interest and imagination, become great rallying points for all citizens. But they also carry a greater lesson on how to motivate each other and ourselves towards greater, positive and progressive causes. (Illustration by Suneesh K.)

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The ideal of putting a man on the moon (for the first moon landing by NASA in July 1969), according to research in 2017 by Wharton professor Andrew Carton, created a common goal for employees. They rallied around it, whether they mopped floors or crunched numbers. This collective spiritedness, in terms of cognitive psychology, came from looking at another person participating in a collaborative event, and seeing oneself not as isolated in one’s work, but as part of a larger collective effort, pieces of a puzzle and cogs in the larger wheel. This tends to give people a sense of meaning and a purpose to their work, the research found.

In the case of a moon landing, as with the Chandrayaan missions, there is public messaging that is directed from the heads of nation and state, president and prime minister and chief ministers, government functionaries, down to the heads of organizations like ISRO and their subdivisions that underline that this is collective work, important work and progressive work. You might just be sewing uniforms for the mission, or handing out tea for the meetings, but it still has the capacity to give you a sense of meaning and purpose, and a belonging to the greater goal. They also convey the understanding that under the umbrella of the greater goal are many sub goals. Without the tea, the employees working on the critical mission could not pull their all-nighters, or extended meetings, and so the janitor or the canteen boy, each is as critical as a tiny screw on the rocket itself. Every part counts. This is what gives projects true momentum and scale.

Moon missions, and all such scientific expeditions but specifically those that capture the collective interest and imagination, become great rallying points for all citizens. But they also carry a greater lesson in how to motivate each other and ourselves towards greater, positive and progressive causes. Messaging counts. Neil Armstrong once said that he never thought they’d actually walk on the moon, it felt impossible. But US President John F. Kennedy, Carton points out, had crafted sub goals, that felt more possible.

Achieving impossible goals also sets the bar on self-determination, important for setting and claiming future territory in the collective consciousness. Former ISRO Chairman K. Kasturirangan in an interview after the successful landing of Chandraayan 3 stated that it was vital since India was always excluded from elite space clubs and cliques. The impact on collective psyche, the ability to be included, to feel a right to belong, to triumph despite having less, and to feel independently capable, all contribute to the pride of self-determination.

These are lessons that translate into everyday work and social situations as well. Self-respect and self-worth that comes from independence, self-effort, allow one to stand up in situations where one may not have equal privileges as the others one competes with. Team building comes from articulating goals clearly and in ways that allows the smallest cog in the wheel to feel like they have something substantial and equally vital to contribute to the greater goal. Impossible goals can feel daunting and make team members feel small. Sub goals help establish what is possible, shift the focus from the abstract to the concrete, and brings focus to the small tasks that align with the larger ones. The rallying totem that a major mission becomes is useful to spur a sense of belonging and motivation among the people associated with it, and the meaning that comes from something lasting, for the greater good, is far more effective than any reward system.
Milestones like these in the collective consciousness of a nation alter our perspective of who we are and how we tell our own stories. Anniversaries of such events remind us, much as the Cricket World Cup win of 1983 does, that we have before and we can again. That even without, we did. And that the seemingly impossible was made possible and it can again. This allows us to set impossible goals, push the threshold of what we imagine a little farther, and try though it may seem futile to do so, and especially when.

The Moon Landings Take Aways

1. Impossible goals are achieved by focusing on possible steps.

2. All abstract achievements, (knowledge, for science, mankind) have tangible milestones (landing on the south pole of the moon, making a budget space vehicle).

3. Goals that are articulated well make the smallest cog in the wheel as vital as the largest.

4. We perceive ourselves, our self-worth, by the milestones we mark independently.

5. Achieving the impossible allows us to set more impossible goals and furthers the limits of our fears, insecurities and ambition.