TIM PEAKE HANGING OUT WITH HOUSTON… 250 MILES UP!

Eyes Front! Freelance Contributor, Mal Robinson spoke to former Astronaut and ex-Brtish Army Major, Tim Peake on the release of his new book - SPACE - The Human Story. We jump straight into the questions about how Tim made Astronaut selection with the European Space Agency and how much of a life changer this was…

“For me it was a huge change. We had just had our eldest child who was 3 months old at that point, so new baby and new job, going abroad and we didn’t really know where we were going to live. We were told my training initially would be in Germany, but then we were told by the Space Agency you could live anywhere, it could be Moscow, it could be Houston or Tokyo, so it was a real leap into the unknown. The Space Agency themselves didn’t even know what they were going to do with us, or where we were going to live, but sometimes in life you have to just take these big leaps and just go with the flow.”

Did you realise at the time just how life changing the move was?

“No not at all. I had that phonecall on the Monday night saying you have been selected would you like to come and join us and they say well the announcement is going to be in Paris on Wednesday and so can you make it? I was like Okay let me speak to my boss and ask for the day off and I said well when will I be back to work? They said, we we will probably have a drink and a meal after the announcement, so plan on flying back Thursday morning. So, I thought I would take a couple of days off.

Yet the reality was, as soon as it was announced on that Wednesday, that I had been selected, Jonathan Amos, the BBC Science reporter was there in Paris and he reported this breaking news and things just went crazy. Before I knew it, we weren’t going for a nice meal and a drink afterwards at all, I was on a Eurostar straight back to London where there was about fifty interviews and went on until about midnight and it was a complete PR frenzy and so nobody expected that from the off.”

What was the thinking about joining the European Space Agency as an Astronaut, was it next level career progression in terms of flying?

“It was another challenge, the next sort of progression from test flying. I was loving test flying and would have loved to have carried on being a test pilot if I had not been successful with the Space Agency. For me it seemed like doing a test pilot’s job on an International level in a different environment and one that would continue to push the boundaries of technology, engineering and what we are doing in space. And so it seemed like the next level of challenge.”

Moving onto the new book and I love the human side of any sectors or life and it is a look back and forward in space exploration, so where would you say in terms of exploring the Universe and what work needs to be done in the future?

“Part of the reason for writing the book now is because we are on a new cusp of space exploration and it seemed like the right time to bring it out into a more public environment. We have had sixty years since the first flight into orbit and it is a really interesting and exciting story of that whole journey that we have had in terms of going through the “Space Race” in the early years through to Apollo, Soyuz and now the Space Station, Skylab, ISS, the whole Shuttle era up until now where we have all these crews training to go back to the Moon and so it felt like the right time to bring these up to date really and bring these stories to life to whats happened since Apollo.”

The front cover of the book has a fascinating image in itself of Bruce McCandless on a Spacewalk, which seems unreal at times and think about what people have achieved in Space?

“It just looks like Bruce has been photoshopped in there, but you have to kind of pinch yourself that that’s a real picture. It was taken by Hugh Gibson and I don’t think they had even planned to take the photo. Everyone is so focussed on being so professional and the moment and what we are doing and I think Hugh saw Bruce out there and thought that makes a good shot. And he thought if I do a good job of this it might get on the cover of Aviation Week and of course not only did it get on the cover of Aviation Week, it became the second most iconic photo of space exploration.”

Leading on from that, what would be your most memorable moment in space?

“My most memorable moment in space is an easy answer for me and that was out on the spacewalk I did. We had about ten minutes to wait before we could actually get to work on the solar panel. We had ten minutes to wait and Houston just said “hang out” and that was ten minutes hanging out on a spacewalk, which Astronauts don’t normally get that opportunity.”

What goes through your mind before you go out into space?

“Its a complete mixture of feelings. Most of the time you are just cracking on with the job and that is at the forefront of every Astronaut’s mind and the shape of it is that some Astronauts can go on a spacewalk and they are either so short or they are so busy, that it’s not until they come inside that they kind of think “Oh my God, was I actually out there and what was that all about?”

And so we were very lucky to have ten minutes to be not just focussed on work and are allowed to just push on into the blackness and just float there and look down on Earth to have those moments of reflection outside is very rare and we were very lucky to be able to do that, but most of the time your primary focus is on the job. I can’t even describe the level of concentration you need, just making sure that everything is absolutely perfect and reducing the risk as much as possible.

There is a saying that nothing is more important than what you are doing right now and this is what you are constantly telling yourself because on one hand you are thinking about so many things, you are thinking about what’s coming up next, you are thinking about “am I behind schedule or ahead of schedule?”, thinking “where’s my crew mate, how are they doing?”, what’s the lighting conditions? So these are the constant things you are thinking about, but you cannot stop thinking priority about what am I doing right now because if you start getting distracted by all of that, that’s when you make a stupid mistake and you could cut your glove and its game over!”