I see him fit - is he still training like a cosmonaut?
When I stopped being an astronaut, I was assigned to NASA headquarters and there, all day, I gained weight. Once I retired I went to Boulder (Colorado), and I cycle every day, happy... But here they have the Pyrenees!
What is the point of exploring space? Some say it's better to invest here.
The exploration of space is an indispensable 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 cloth and, stimulated by serotonin, they will roll it into a ball and go looking for new places to play: we evolved to be explorers.
Does all progress excite you? 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 a lot to space exploration...
Without it we wouldn't have GPS maps on mobile, 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 goals in megaprojects such as the Hubble Space Telescope itself or any of the very complex missions in space.
What does a systems engineer do?
Get everyone else to sync up for a specific goal. Today, major high-tech manufacturers rely on systems engineers like those who completed the Apollo program.
Were there more engineerings born for the exploration of space?
Computer-aided design. If you design a steel sculpture on the screen today, and let's say you simulate on the computer that it faces a wind of 150 km/h, the program will tell you whether it will resist or not and whether you should redesign it.
Before mistakes cost lives.
Well these programs were conceived for the design of spaceships.
Have you been scared up there orbiting the Earth?
When he was afraid he thought of Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer, who was lost in the ice without hope of rescue and played football between ice floes with his crew to distract himself.
Is this courage or recklessness?
This is the spirit that makes us human. If the space is there, it must be explored.
Does he see us ready to explore the cosmos if we can barely withstand gravity?
We just have to follow the 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.
Is it just a matter of time?
Sherpas have blood already adapted to the 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 the space?
By technology or genetics. At the moment, the lack of gravity up there weakened my muscles and bones and for that, I had to do a lot of exercise. The heart in weightlessness weakened and so did the immune system.
Wasn't the astronaut diet helping?
We still need a lot of research on this factor. I missed vitamin D on my missions in 1995, for example, in my diet up there without sunlight. Today, this vitamin is 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 every moment.
Shouldn't it be due to some drug or medication?
Nothing like that.
The euphoria of being famous?
It wasn't for fame when he came back either. It was something more intimate and deep. And that he knew about other diseases 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 lives are still short. But the species is also young: only a million years old. We've come a long way... And wait.
