Thomas Pesquet is due to meet the new astronaut from the European Space Agency who will begin his new training this Monday in Cologne.
“I will tell him to be patient”, said Monday April 3 on franceinfo Thomas Pesquet who will meet the French Sophie Adenot the new astronaut of the European Space Agency who will start her new training this Monday in Cologne. She will learn, in particular, to live in the International Space Station.
Before launching into space, it is sometimes necessary to wait several years: “It’s not a passive wait, it’s obviously a very active wait, but it can be a bit long”, emphasizes Thomas Pesquet who has twice boarded the International Space Station.
franceinfo: How do you learn to be an astronaut?
Thomas Pésquet: It’s quite academic actually. The timetable resembles a high school or college timetable. We will start with some theoretical courses on all the disciplines of space. People have slightly different backgrounds: helicopter pilot, doctor… There are people who have studied different things. We are going to put them at about the same level in space science and technology. Then, we will learn Russian, play sports and do activities as and when more and more practical.
You are going to welcome Sophie Adenot to Germany. What advice are you going to give him?
I had met Buzz Aldrin at the very beginning, before I had even started. He told me two things: “Be patient and respect your elders”. It had made me smile. I don’t want to tell him “respect your elders” because it’s a little bombastic, but I’m going to tell him to be patient, that’s for sure. We can wait quite a few years before going into space. It’s not a passive wait, it’s obviously a very active wait, but it can be a bit long. It is an important quality.
The Moon remains your number one goal?
Yes of course. Our new promo will start doing their basic training. Then, train for his first missions. It will take a few years though. We can count between five and ten years so that they may have time to go all or a majority to the Space Station. And during this time, it is the people from my class of 2009 who will carry out the next missions to the Moon. And then, in a second step, we will all be in the same situation. We will all follow each other.
Why repeat what was done half a century ago?
Precisely because we don’t do what has been done. That is what is interesting. At the time, the Americans and the Russians just intended to win the race. It was a question of hegemony. They didn’t have much science, even if in the end, we learned a lot. Today, what we would like to do is return to the Moon in a more sustainable way. Using resources. We know that there is solid water in the form of ice. It could give us oxygen, hydrogen. We really want to settle down, to have a scientific base on the Moon like we can have one today in Antarctica or in somewhat extreme places on Earth. This approach is not the same. It’s not winning a race for ideological reasons, it’s really going for it, but for scientific reasons.
With the idea perhaps also in mind that if things go wrong on our little planet, the Moon can serve as planet B?
No, the Moon, especially not! It is really too small and unfortunately not much could be done about it. It’s not an idea that we have, in fact, the idea of planet B. It gives the impression that it’s not too serious what is happening on Earth, that we will find a solution magic and that everything will work out. This is not at all the position of the agencies. We, what we want is to learn things about the Earth and obviously about man, about what can happen to us in the future, about perhaps the fate of the planet. That’s why we want to go to Mars because it’s a kind of twin planet of Earth, we can learn a lot about ourselves. It’s not for the purpose of transporting all of civilization there and then starting over.