• Question: Are you planning on going to Space?

    Asked by aliceb to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 10 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by sams1, cerys, wellsy, tonieastup123, lol4eva, igloo23, fearswag.
    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 10 Mar 2012:

      No, I don’t like flying (or even driving for that matter). And I quite like gardening, and space is a bit cold and dry. So I like being on the ground and looking into space, and being comfortable!

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 10 Mar 2012:

      If they’ll let me, most certainly.

      I’ve wanted to go to Mars for as long as I can remember, but there’s very little chance of that happening – it will probably be people from your generation at the earliest that go there.

      But I’d happily settle for a suborbital flight, or going into orbit if I can make it, or just going to the moon.

      If you read what people who’ve gone say about going into space, it sounds amazing. The simple act of seeing the Earth from above can change your perspective on everything.

    • Photo: Catherine Rix

      Catherine Rix answered on 10 Mar 2012:

      It’s really hard to get picked to be an astronaut. Someone I know who works for the European Space Agency told me that to have the best chance to be picked you need to be able to fly a plane, have a degree and PhD in physics, biology or medicine and be able to speak Russian! I’m quite claustrophobic so I doubt I’d get through all the tests they do. It would be amazing to see the Earth from space though. I’ve done the next best thing and sent an experiment to the edge of space – check out the view here

    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 10 Mar 2012:

      I did used to want to be an astronaut when I was a teenager, and I think it must be an amazing experience to go into space. But right now the process doesn’t sound too fun to me – I much more enjoy having time to learn about the interesting things in space, than learning about how rockets work, and being tested for my tolerance to claustrophobia and acceleration and whatever else all the astronauts go through. Also I wear glasses, and I’m not as fit as I’d like to be, so I don’t think I’d ever be picked anyway! 😉 And I wouldn’t want to spend so much time away from my children.

      However I think it’s really important that children and young people believe they have a chance of being an astronaut. When I was a teenager only Americans and Europeans fully signed up to ESA (and Russians) could realistically be astronauts. That didn’t include British citizen at the time (Britain did/does not pay for the human spaceflight part of ESA). This seems to have changed with the selection of Timothy Peake as an ESA astronaut (note that Michael Foale has both British and American nationality and it is the latter which allowed him to be selected as a NASA astronaut).

      It continues to make me angry that nationality plays such a role in the selection of astronauts though.

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 10 Mar 2012:

      I’d love to go to space! I’m just about to start a job with NASA that will work out how we can use algae and plants to keep people alive on long missions on the space station or when travelling to Mars, and it’d be ace to be able to go and test out my work in space for real!

      I hope that it all happens before I get too old, but I would be satisfied with seeing a manned mission to Mars or a base on the moon within my lifetime, even if I don’t get to go.

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