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I once had the privilege of driving a bunch of astronauts and cosmonauts around town. They all expressed the attitude of "regardless of our political differenc
by lotharbot 14y ago
I once had the privilege of driving a bunch of astronauts and cosmonauts around town. They all expressed the attitude of "regardless of our political differences, we've all experienced the same extraordinary thing, and that makes us brothers." Though the space programs in the 60s were very competitive in a political sense, those who were actually dealing with the realities of space (including the engineers on the ground) had tremendous respect for each other. There was a huge amount of cooperation between the two sides.
- someperson 14y agoWow, that's so cool. Could you tell us the entire story about driving the astronauts/cosmonauts around together? :-)
- lotharbot 14y agoThere's not much to it. It was a few years back at one of the annual Space Congress events (http://www.spacecongress.org/ http://www.spacecongress.org/ ). I was working for an aerospace museum and was tasked with picking up some of our VIPs at the airport and taking them to their hotel and then to our museum. Most of them had met at previous events, and treated each other like old friends. Two of them (IIRC, Dirk Frimout and Yury Usachev) got into an extended discussion about places they'd visited in my hometown. I don't quite know how to communicate how normal it all seemed -- as if they were family members talking about childhood, rather than members of opposite sides of what had been a bitter rivalry. If you ever have a chance to talk to an astronaut or cosmonaut, don't pass it up. They are all incredibly brilliant people.