Europe’s ESA astronauts display unity in diversity
In the context of the Green Paper consultation, the 16-strong European Astronaut Corps met in Brussels on 13 March 2003 to put forward their case for humans in space. Hailing from eight nations, they spoke with a single voice: humanity has a place in space and Europe must remain at the forefront.
The astronauts were in Brussels to present their argument for human space flight to the European Commission, represented by Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin. Their opinions are summarised in a new publication, entitled ‘A case for humans in space’, which includes the ‘Charta of the European Astronaut Corps’.
“This is the first time we have had the entire Astronaut Corps together in one place,” said the European Space Agency’s J. P. Poncelet. “The people you will meet here today have already logged 40 space flights, but we hope this is only the beginning of our great common adventure in human space exploration.”
Message from the astronauts
“We came here to convey a message,” said astronaut Thomas Reiter, who spent 179 days on the Mir space station. “Today, Europe is going through a difficult process of integration, and we believe, as European astronauts, that we can serve as a model of European integration and co-operation. We are working together without any consideration for our individual nationalities, working towards the day when we will all be simply Europeans.”
It is clear that a major asset of human space flight is the extent to which the public identifies personally with the crews and their lives, but the problem of establishing a single European identity has been evoked before by astronaut Frank Dewinne and by former astronaut Franco Malerba. According to Reiter, “We think that by working together with common goals, perhaps including an all-European space crew, we can go a long way towards showing Europeans that we are indeed one people with a common destiny.”
The Columbia legacy
Hans Schlegel flew aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1993. Asked about the recent loss of the Columbia and its crew, he said, “We are all experiencing the loss very deeply, and our first responsibility is of course to comfort the families of our fallen colleagues. Next, we must try to understand what went wrong, and finally we must get back into space. We have got to carry on with the endeavour that our brave friends gave their lives for. The International Space Station will go on, we will go on, and we will continue to explore and push the limits of human knowledge and accomplishment.”
Astronaut Frank Dewinne said, “Anyone who sits on top of a rocket and gets blasted into space is aware in a very direct way of the dangers involved, but we do our jobs and we trust in the technology and in the excellent teams of scientists, engineers and technicians behind us. When a tragedy like this occurs, we must do everything we can to understand it so that it doesn’t happen again, but we cannot allow it to stop us from moving forward.”
Scientific excellence and human inspiration
With its renowned heritage of excellence in basic sciences, Europe has continued to focus on scientific discovery through its space programmes. This is reflected in the composition of the Astronaut Corps, which has almost the same number of scientists as pilots. The International Space Station, of which Europe holds a significant share, represents an excellent test bed for a range of scientific experiments in the physical and life sciences.
“The spirit of exploration and discovery finds it fullest expression in these fabulous men and women,” said Commissioner Busquin. “Their concrete scientific and technical achievements are crucial to all of us as we move into the future, but their outstanding courage and sense of adventure is equally important, inspiring both young and old to be curious and to embrace science and innovation. The dream is still alive and will hopefully be reflected in a future European Space Policy!”
