I see you in shape: are you still training as a cosmonaut?
When I stopped being an astronaut, I was posted to NASA headquarters and there. sitting all day, I got fat. When I retired I went to Boulder, Colorado and I ride every day. Happy...But here are the Pyrenees!
What is the use of exploring space? Some say that it is better to invest here.
Space exploration is an inalienable part of the human experience. We are human because exploring, discovering and innovating by creating new instruments is what makes us human.
How do you know?
Give a child a rag and, stimulated by serotonin, they will curl up into a ball and go looking for new places to play: we have evolved to be explorers.
Does all progress excite? Can't too many screens be depressing?
When I started working at Hubble 40 years ago, there were no digital cameras: we used film and I loved developing it in the darkroom. And today I prefer to think that the technological progress of these four decades owes much to space exploration...
Without it we would not have GPS maps on our mobile phones to begin with...
For me, the development of systemic engineering has been equally important...
Define “systemic engineering”.
It is the one that coordinates all the others to achieve specific objectives in megaprojects such as the Hubble Space Telescope itself or any of the extremely complex missions into space.
What a systems engineer do?
Get all the others in sync for a specific goal. Today the big high-tech manufacturers rely on systems engineers like the ones who completed the Apollo program.
Were there more engineering born for space exploration?
The computer aided design. If today you design a steel sculpture on the screen, and let's say you simulate on the computer that it is facing a 150 km/h wind, the program will tell you if it will resist or not and if you should redesign it.
Before, mistakes cost lives.
Well, those programs were conceived for the design of spaceships.
Have you been scared up there orbiting the Earth?
When he was afraid he thought of Shackelton, the Antarctic explorer, who was lost in the ice with no hope of rescue and played soccer between icebergs with his crew to distract himself.
Is that courage or recklessness?
That is the spirit that makes us human. If space is there, you have to explore it.
Do you see us ready to explore the cosmos if we can barely stand gravity?
We just have to follow evolutionary instinct and the genes will adapt. The Inuit or the Sherpas of the Himalayas have developed genetics for generations to adapt to the pole or the peaks.
It's just a matter of time?
Sherpas have blood already adapted to extreme altitude. On the other hand, in the Andes the natives have not had time to adapt their genetics to the peaks, because they have been there for fewer generations.
Will we adapt equally to space?
By technology or genetics. For now, the lack of gravity up there left my muscles and bones weak and so I had to exercise a lot. The heart in weightlessness weakened and the immune system, too.
Didn't the astronaut diet help?
We still need a lot of research on this. I missed vitamin D on my missions in 1995, for example, on mine up there without sunlight. Today this vitamin is already administered with more exercise and the cosmonauts do not return so weak.
But were you happy up there or were you just doing your duty?
It was somehow and I felt inexplicably happy at every moment.
Wouldn't it be some drug or medication?
Nothing of that.
The euphoria of being famous?
Nor was it for fame upon return. It was something more intimate and profound. And that he knew of other ailments also associated with space, such as eye disorders.
How far will we go in the cosmos?
For now, the limit is our own life expectancy, which is too short for the distances required by space exploration; but you also know that we are extending it day by day.
Would you go back to space?
Well: our individual life is still short; but the species is also young: only a million years old. We've already come a long way... And wait.
