rabat Nike Lunar Eclipse

I've met Thomas and Andy last week in Houston at the Exp 34 100 days party and I was pleased to hear about their training (and the fun stories that happen in the NBL when you have 3 Shenanigans at the same time in it ). Sorry if I bother you with more questions, but does that mean you remain the reserve astronaut for ESA and that for a long time?

Thank you for your time answering the questions!
Gabrielle

as far as I know, the reserve astronaut training is only one person per Agency. However, Thomas and Andy are in Houston right now doing pretty much the same training as I did as a reserve astronaut.

I have had some training with Terry (and Butch) in January in Houston, but I only started training with Anton on this training session in Star City.

Samantha

Interesting post and quite unusual for this blog! I would be interested in learning more about the reserve astronaut thing you are talking about in the first part - I am curious about it, I've never heard of it! Since now you're assigned, does Thomas, or Andy, or Tim took replaced you for that?
Also, does that mean you are meeting for the first time you 2 crewmates and never had any training with them before?

Thank you for the post, it's always great to read about Shenanigans in training!

Gabrielle

do I understand correctly that you're asking if there are maximum limits for anthropometric measurement in selecting astronauts? If so, yes, there are. But you need to be really very tall to be over the limit. I think you would be fine.

I'm not sure I understand your question about the contingency plan or protocol. What contingency are you referring to?

Thanks!

Samantha

Is there a size limitation purposefully built into the Space program, American or otherwise? It's interesting to myself on two fronts.

1. I'm 6 foot 3 inches tall (1.9 meters) and weigh on the average 220 pounds (99.7 kilograms).

2. The average size of humans has significantly changed over the course of time.

As the average size of our species increases fundamentally physics remain the same and because of this, which human size may be environmentally driven, I would assume that a contingency plan, or protocol, would indeed be in place. If so does this protocol differ between the European and American space agencies?

At any rate it was great to have had the opportunity to share in your survival experience Samantha.

Well, let's see... find the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything? No, we know that one

Jokes apart. There will be scientific and technical goals set for our mission. Not by me, but by people way smarter than me. So my obvious goal is to play my part as a crewmember in achieving that goal: that means basically being a good crewmember.

On the personal side I would like:

a) have a fun time with my crew
b) bring the public along as good as I can, so that anybody who wants to can take part in our mission, learn about spaceflight and then go out and tell to all their friends how cool it is!

It is nice to hear that your training is going well- we cannot wait to see you flying high above our spaceship Earth in 2014!

If it is alright with you I would like to ask a question:

What goals are you looking to achieve during your time on the ISS?

Thanks for keeping us up to day on everything!

Cian