Crews have rebelled against captains, troops against generals for as long as men (and women) have been led or told what to do. I was watching a superd show called Mars Rising, narrated by William Shatner on Discovery Channel last night, when there was a brief snippet about rebellions in space.
As per usual I did some snooping and came up with a few close calls dating back almost 40 years.
Apollo 7 astronauts had an extraordinarily hard time of their mission in 1968. The first new Apollo launch after the Apollo 6 launch pad disaster, the crew felt the pressure to make this one a success. They had pressures from onboard as well: they all had colds. Great, a cold, clammy microscopicaly small capsule with 3 runny nosed men. For 11 long days. Around and around they go, orbit after orbit, testing and re-testing. Getting hundreds of trials completed, scenarios played out in orbit before the first long range charge at the moon. It is said that not all of the requests from mission control were carried out when they wanted them to.
In 1972, the crew of Skylab (remember Skylab?) got fed up with an over ambitious schedule and simply booked a flex day. The day after they worked out a more realistic work load.
MIR wasn't so lucky. A workhorse both in kilometers traveled and hours logged by its crews, it was also the first true space outpost. A place astronauts went and moved in and stayed. In 1995 2 Russian astronauts simply refused to don their space suits and head outside. Ground engineers couldn't do a whole heck of a lot so they said OK, fine, have it your way. Back on earth there was some crap flying. The MIR commander of the time had simply had enough and wanted to wait until fresh replacements arrived.
MIR had suffered an enormous fire that year, that if it had not been put out, could have done in the place. Later on in June a supply ship crashed into MIR, cutting its power in half and generally making a hash of the place.
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