Gallery: Q&A: British astronaut Tim Peake on the ISS, Helen Sharman and Bowie puns Gallery Gallery: Q&A: British astronaut Tim Peake on the ISS, Helen Sharman and Bowie puns + 4

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"There's a real astronaut!" says a child walking past me in the Science Museum. The little boy was pointing to a man dressed in a 70s Nasa spacesuit. It was an actor dressed as Gene Cernan, the last man to step on the Moon. He was on hand to provide a tour around the museum's space exhibit.


Little did the youngster know that the real astronaut was just a few metres away: Major Tim Peake, a wiry former military test pilot and first British citizen to be selected as an astronaut by the European Space Agency.

8,413 people from across Europe applied to take part in a rigorous, year-long screening process; only six individuals were successful. Peake was one of them. Since he received the call-up one Monday night in May 2009, he's been training at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne and with Nasa in Houston Texas. In May 2013, it was announced that he'd been assigned to a six-month mission to the International Space Station, launching in November 2013 -- a coup given that many unassigned astronauts wait more than ten years for their first flight.

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In low-earth orbit the Earth still appears so large outside the window that you still have that connection, although you are in zero gravity. On a Mars mission when the Earth becomes a dot no bigger than a star, that's when you'll feel real isolation and get a real sense of the vastness and bleakness of space Tim Peake

His training has already involved living underwater for 12 days and witnessing open-heart surgery. Over the next 18 months, Peake will have to learn about the entire structure of the ISS, so that he knows how all of the various modules, life support systems and scientific equipment works. He'll also need to learn how to manipulate the robotic arm used to dock some visiting vehicles, prepare for a spacewalk and learn the Russian language.


Wired.co.uk managed to find a sliver of time in his schedule to speak to Peake about the UK's space programme, Helen Sharman, Bowie puns and, er, space flatulence.

Wired.co.uk: How many times have people said "Ground Control to Major Tim" to you? Does it ever get boring?

Tim Peake: [Laughs] When I was selected back in May 2009, one of the first things I thought after I'd gone through the whole initial "oh my god I've just been chosen by the space agency", was "I can guess the first title in the newspaper". It was obvious.

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Since then I've seen it numerous times, but no-one's actually said it to me.


A lot of my army colleagues have joked that I'll never get promoted beyond Major now because no-one will want Lieutenant Colonel Tim. It doesn't have the same ring to it!

You've had a long career in the Army. Can you identify any particular moment when you decided that being an astronaut was a realistic career option?

It was much, much later than most people think because of the politics and the fact that I was working as a specialist helicopter test pilot. It was only when the European Space Agency held its selection [2009] and it was open to the UK that I thought "wow, this is too good an opportunity to miss". Before then I had just assumed that there was no easy path for a British citizen to become an astronaut. [Others have either been forced to leverage a dual UK-US citizenship to fly with Nasa (e.g. Michael Foale) or fly with privately owned space companies (e.g. first Briton in space, Helen Sharman)].

This "astronaut" is just an actor in the Science Museum Science Museum

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There was a year-long selection for European Astronaut Corps. What was the hardest part?

The very first day. It was designed to be tough, with about eight to ten hours in front of a computer screen, not many breaks, just going through what they call the "non-trainable skills". These include your basic level of concentration, memory retention, spatial awareness, then a bit of maths and engineering and language thrown in as well.

Was there anything about the selection process that surprised you?

The psychological profiling. I knew there would be tests, but I didn't realise how deep a level they would go to; It continued throughout the entire year. The idea is that over a long period of time you can cheat the system. When you go to an interview you know the answers that the interviewer wants to hear, but with psychological profiling they want to get to the nitty-gritty of what you are like as a character. It's not really strange considering that the minimum missions we are looking at at the moment are about six months and we are looking in the near future to year-and-a-half-long missions.

I read about the medical selection process in an article you wrote in the Telegraph, in which you said you had a double enema and a

sigmoidoscopy.

Why?

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The point of the medical selection is quite interesting because they are not expecting you to be an Olympian, all they want is to select the people who have the lowest risk of having a medical problem [in space]. So they look at brain scans, cardiovascular fitness, risk of an exposure to cancer. The sigmoidoscopy was to check for any signs of cancer [in the bowel]; it was not a pleasant experience at all. The worst thing was that they scheduled our VO2 max test, where you get rigged up with the oxygen mask and put on a running machine, straight after the sigmoidoscopy. No sooner have you been filled up with gas and air than you are put on a running machine and expected to run as fast as you can.

ESA astronaut Tim Peake inspecting a Russian Orlan suit during training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow. The Orlan suit allows astronauts and cosmonauts to venture outside the International Space Station for up to 7 hours to install new equipment or conduct maintenance and repair. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre

I saw on Twitter that you have been watching some surgeries at the university hospital in Cologne over the last week.

Why was that?

We were looking at the basic stuff we might have to do -- local anaesthesia, suturing, insertion of IV drips, blood draws -- basic procedures. But they also gave us a bit of an exposure to full on open-heart surgery and neurosurgery, which you are not going to have to do but it makes you realise how tolerant the body is. In my military career I'd been exposed to a fair degree of [injuries] already, but if you haven't, you don't want the first time you are exposed to injury to be on board the Space Station. When you are looking at a beating heart and a pair of lungs, with someone's chest wide open, you think, "OK, the body can tolerate that".

You are still a while off going up (November 2015). Is there any part of the training that you are dreading?

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Not really. I think the hardest training for me has been the Russian language and still is. We have to be fairly fluent in Russian for the Souyez journey to and from the ISS. The practical training I love -- that's where my skillsets are focussed.

What experiments will you be doing aboard the ISS?

I don't know exactly what experiments, but one of the main things is that the human body is the test bed -- so there will be lots of experiments on me in terms of monitoring my bone density before, during and after, monitoring blood pressure, ultrasounds of various parts of the body including the eye, and looking at intracranial pressure.

There will also definitely be a whole range of fluid physics, biological experiments, material science experiments, but I can't yet tell you specifics. I'll probably find that out in about a year's time.

The UK has typically avoided the cosmic one-upmanship of manned missions in favour of more commercial space applications

[read Wired.co.uk's feature on the topic here]. Why do you think this is?

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Well in the early days of spaceflight we were very strong, very healthy in terms of British technology at the cutting edge of rocket development. A number of those projects were cancelled one after the other by the government so our expertise really shifted from that area into other more commercial areas such as small satellites.

Why is it important for the UK to participate in human spaceflight?

We are only going one direction in space and that's further and further away from Earth. We are going to be going to asteroids, to the Moon to Mars. It's going to get bigger and if we don't join in and start to grow that industry base we'll find that other countries outcompete us. We'll be left just with the industry we have and it will be harder to compete and grow. So it's good for industry and for science.

Also, space excites kids and gets them interested in science, engineering and maths. It's that kind of inspirational effect that will help our kids become science-based students and grow our economy.

Do you think that not having a human spaceflight programme until recently means UK kids haven't been inspired?

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To begin with, kids are inspired by space. They see space, read books and get excited. Even today, lots of our books are about Apollo and the Moon landings because we haven't really explored much beyond that. But of course as kids get older they think, "are there any job opportunities for me?". If they don't see that there is a career path for them then of course they won't follow that route.

Do you think that the continued references to you being the "first official" British astronaut undermines what Helen Sharman and others achieved before you? Does it really matter?

It does matter. It matters that Helen Sharman was the first British astronaut. I don't get excited about titles or being "first" or anything. That's something that's simply been generated through a number of media articles and events. What is important is that the UK has now joined the ELIPS programme and the human spaceflight programme. That is very important indeed. That makes me the first "official" astronaut. When people say that, I relate it to the fact that I'm an astronaut at a time when the British government has joined the spaceflight programme. But Helen was the first and I would never want to take that away from her.

Chris Hadfield set the benchmark for public outreach.

How important do you think this sort of public outreach is?

It's very important. At the end of the day we are spending taxpayer money and you need to report back about what you are doing, why you are doing it and why it's beneficial. Sometimes it's difficult to do because often the benefits of human spaceflight come much later. By the time they reach the market, the fact that they originated in space -- think of Velcro as an example -- has been diluted. There is so much more that we have gained from human spaceflight. It's an unsung success story.

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You've said you won't inflict your singing on people, but will you be showcasing any unusual skills while up there?

In terms of my personal skills probably not. I play the guitar much worse than Chris Hadfield so I don't think I'll be strumming a song, but I will be having fun and trying to do as many fun experiments as possible. I'll be talking to kids and talking on ham radio, tweeting, posting videos on YouTube, taking photographs and maximising the opportunity we have. I'll also have a number of competitions to engage as many people as possible. I want to use this opportunity so people feel a bit of ownership of the mission themselves.

ESA astronaut Timothy Peake training at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters on the robotic "Canadarm" for his mission on the International Space Station. Canadian Space Agency

Clearly going into space is very exciting, but is there anything in particular you are looking forward to?

Using the robotic arm to help dock vehicles coming to the ISS. We have three visiting vehicles (if not more) and some will need capturing with the arm. It's a highly intensive task for the astronauts to do. You must grapple this visiting vehicle and then berth it to the Space Station. Also a spacewalk, if the opportunity arises, will be incredible. That would be the icing on the cake.

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Then there's simply living and working in space for six months. You can go to the cupola window and look down on planet Earth. That is just wonderful.

Is there anything you aren't looking forward to?

Not really. Inevitably I will miss my friends and family and there will be times when you are dying to have a nice hot shower but you can't. You might also be craving some fresh fruit, vegetables or something silly like a pizza that you can't just have. But really it's not a case of not looking forward to anything.

What about motion sickness?

It's inevitable at some point. Normally it occurs either in the first two or three days, where you have Space Adaptation Syndrome.

It can hit anybody. It doesn't matter if you are a pilot with thousands of hours of experience. Then there's the re-entry, which is very dynamic and tough on the body. You've been living in space for six months and suddenly you are subjected to high Gs, shockloading, spinning around in a capsule under a parachute.

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Generally when you come off the Souyoz after six months you are not feeling well. You will have to work very hard to put a smile on your face. But within 24 hours you'll feel a whole lot better.

What's the biggest misconception about going into space?

That we are not doing anything useful! We are learning a lot about the human body, medical techniques, material science, industry, we are learning about metals, alloys -- all sorts.

Do you think you might feel isolated up there?

In low-Earth orbit the Earth still appears so large outside the window that you still have that connection, although you are in zero gravity. On a Mars mission when the Earth becomes a dot no bigger than a star, that's when you'll feel real isolation and get a real sense of the vastness and bleakness of space.

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Would you sign up for a Mars mission?

When my kids [aged two and five] are older. At the moment I have a responsibility to be around as a father.

Do they understand what you are doing?

My eldest does. Now we are living in Houston and so he sees me at work on a regular basis, but to him it's completely normal. Last summer, we went round to Luca Palmitano's [the astronaut whose helmet filled with water while doing a spacewalk] house when he was doing a video conference with his family. We sat and chatted for an hour to Luca on the Space Station. To Thomas it was completely normal: "Oh there's Luca, hi!"

Apart from family, what will you miss the most?

The outdoors lifestyle. I love doing outdoors things with my family: hiking, walking, running, fresh air, rock climbing, camping -- that kind of stuff. You are in a sealed environment for six months. That's what I'll miss.

What's the worst question you've ever been asked in an interview?

The most ridiculous question was from Jeremy Paxman, who asked whether I was just going to be drifting around doing very little.

[He actually asked in a bizarrely, but not uncharacteristically, antagonistic interview: "Surely all you are doing is floating around up there playing the guitar" and "They just seem to be up there nowadays playing the guitar. It's not what most people would recognise as a taxing job."]

I think we can do better. I told Twitter I was coming to interview you and asked if anyone had any questions for you. @Vickmed87 asked: "Do farts smell better or worse in space?"


You are going to have to ask that question in two years' time. But we have pretty good air circulation on the ISS. It's important that CO2 is moved. If you are working behind a rack in an enclosed environment and don't have good air circulation, a bubble of CO2 will build up. With no convection, it hangs around your head and you'll suffocate. So the air flow is very good.

But I've heard when astronauts first arrive on the Space Station it has a kind of metallic smell that's not unpleasant but not pleasant. But you get used to it after a few hours.

Thanks for providing such a sensible answer to our, frankly, ridiculous question.