Astronaut diary. Week 5 – History of space and the workings of ESA and the EU

Monday 25 November

The week started a bit unconventionally with about three hours of lectures on the inner workings of the European Union. The EU and ESA are two separate organisations, but they cooperate to some extent. It is probably important to know the interrelationships between all European institutions involved in space activities and space research…

After finishing the lectures about the EU and its organizational structure, which were not very attractive for me, but nevertheless important, we finally moved on to something more related to actual space training – the history of manned spaceflight. The course started with a few lessons on the space race between the West and the East in the last century, the beginnings of space exploration and the first rocket technologies. The whole week was in a similar vein.

Tuesday 26 November

Tuesday was again dedicated to the history of space flight. About three hours of lectures on the first orbital stations Almaz and Salyut and on the Space Shuttle programme. I found it interesting to learn more details about the differences between the American and Soviet manned flight programs in the 1960s and 1970s, but also to delve into the details of the development and operation of the space shuttles. Not that these topics were anything new to me, given my background in aerospace and rocketry and having taken courses on launch vehicles and manned spaceflight, but it was certainly very rewarding. If only because the person giving the lecture had been involved in managing some of the space missions that were discussed, including those with the Space Shuttles…
Before the Tuesday lectures started, however, I had a great opportunity to pop into the gym for two hours! It was my turn for my initial fitness assessment. So I had my body composition measured on special equipment to see where I stood in terms of fat, weight, muscle mass and so on. Surprisingly, I found out that I am not obese… Then it was on to measuring body stability (that is, a series of exercises like standing on one leg with eyes closed on an electronic mat that senses pressure distribution). Then they measured how high I can jump from different positions, how strong my hand grip is, or how long I can stay in the so-called “planck”, which is a position resembling a dachshund, where you lie on your elbows and tiptoes. Then they found out what my max was in bench press, squat and deadlift and did a few more assessments. It went pretty well – no wonder, being a fighter pilot obviously doesn’t hurt…

Wednesday 27 November

I started the third day of the week (the so-called “hump day”, as Wednesday is called overseas in the simile of the top of the hump of a camel, which symbolizes the middle of the week) with six hours of PR (public relations activities). This included hours of photo and video shoots at various locations at the EAC – in the training hall, in the mock-up of Columbus, in the gym, in the NBF pool, as well as filming an interview for Czech Radio. Immediately after the PR, I changed into sports clothes and went for a pretty intense two-hour strength training session in the gym. We started with a 20-minute warm-up, followed by a long series of strength exercises with dumbbells, with some jumping jacks and self-weight exercises in between each round to “rest”. After this enjoyable time, I went out for dinner with a rather large group of Czech journalists who were due to arrive at the EAC the very next day for another round of PRs.

Thursday 28 November

Thursday was another day dedicated mainly to media activities. A group of about sixteen people from eight different Czech media outlets arrived at the EAC at 8am. We did a series of interviews and filming at various training locations. Instructor Hervé Stevenin, EAC head Frank De Winne and EUROCOM operator Alex Karl were kind enough to join us for some of the interviews, which was great – I think it’s very good to hear their perspective on astronaut training and EAC operations as well. PR went on until about 12:30, so I then had a few minutes for a quick lunch, after which I headed to the multimedia training room where we had a two-hour lecture on physical training methodology. This was led by one of the EAC fitness coaches. Then it was time for more PR again – recording my part for the new episode of the ESA podcast. The Czech media was very responsive, so the interviews we filmed in the morning were broadcast on the main evening news of the three biggest Czech TV stations the same day.

Friday 29 November

On the last day of the week we went back to space history. We had more than three hours of lectures on the construction of the ISS, and how this giant space vehicle, which has been orbiting the Earth for more than twenty years and which we all hope to visit in the next few years, works in general. The day was interspersed with time for administration, so I had a chance to catch up on emails and basically everything that’s happened in the last day on projects I’m working on within the Air Force (which I otherwise do here in the mornings and evenings…). This time we finished fairly early – at 2:30 – so we could each head out for the weekend…