Chicago – So, who likes to fly into space? I’m going to talk to you about the life of a cosmonaut. What it’s like to actually fly? I’m delighted with the idea that we’re approaching a transition—after which, it will totally be possible for anyone to fly into space.It’s a difference to see earth from a distance. Everybody I know who had been there had a profound experience.
So, thanks to all the profit I made from those SSLs], I found a chance to take on this challenge. Of course, this is a way to make my life potentially shorter—but also potentially more beautiful.
Travelling into space was my answer to the question “What’s the one thing you want to do before you die?”
I went to Russia and lived there for a year to train for the travel. It is an extraordinary place. Very different culturally and socioeconomically. Their language is excellent—I would call it a mixture of testosterone and ballet.
The first thing that I did there is cosmonaut medical testing—which everybody hated. I figured that, if I did this, everybody would take me seriously. Granted, after 2-3 weeks of spending my time in there, I questioned my decision [laughs.] But it was worth it.
The training consisted of many things. I remembered getting into a parabolic flight and was asking “where is the spare parachute?” when they answered “here in Russia, we don’t need any spare chute.” There were also the centrifuge training to condition your body to be able to stay alert, focused and functional during re-entry. There were simulation of different processes in the flight. There were also survival training, because, you know, when you are in a vehicle that orbits the earth every 90 minutes, you do want some survival training for different situations that you might encounter. For example, when the suit is inflated, it restricts your blood supply. This was why they spent a lot of time tweaking your suit to make it as comfortable as possible.
And there was the final suit test, where they would inflate your suit, put you in a vacuum chamber, then suck the air out of it.
So there we were, 3 guys from Italy, Russia and South Africa.
There were all these activities that serve as a kind of “tunnel” that takes up you to the launch day.
The very scary day was really the night before the launch. That was when I said to myself, “Look, I have proven that I can do this. Now do I really want to do this?
In the morning of the launch, you went through all this tradition. The real irony of this is that it took 2 hours for guys in surgical suits to suit you up, so that the whole world knows that the suit is indeed sealed, then you would go into a bus, stop in the middle of the way, rip your suit off and take a piss on the bus’ wheels. Everybody did it, because the first cosmonaut did it.
This, by the way, was where all the “good stuff” got into the ISS (International Space Station) [laughs.]
Did you know you can see a tiger in Siberia?