He Was Depressed, Astronaut Says

Returning astronaut John Blaha said that he got depressed after a few weeks on Russia’s space station and that his four-month stay would have been easier if he had had private quarters and a fellow American on board. “Isolation is a tough thing,” Blaha said from space shuttle Atlantis in a radio hookup with four people living in an airtight chamber at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “After I’d been there a month, I was a little bit getting psychologically depressed,” said Blaha, 54, a retired Air Force colonel who flew 361 combat missions in Vietnam.