• Question: Who was your favourite astronaut when you were young?

    Asked by Random pixel addict to Anne, Beth, COLFlight, Jon, Tom on 6 Oct 2015. This question was also asked by oluchi40.
    • Photo: Columbus Flight Directors

      Columbus Flight Directors answered on 6 Oct 2015:

      Simon:
      Nice question RPA!

      When I was growing up I took my inspiration from 3 astronauts:

      – John Young (for flying the widest range of space vehicles: Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle!)
      – Scott Musgrave (for the larget number of spacewalks ever conducted and for saving the Hubble Space Telescope)
      – Eilleen Collins for being the first female shuttle commander.

      Checkout this portait of John Young: the deep concentration and dedication on his face is very inspirational:

      http://www.johnwyoung.org/sts1/enlarge-sts1/jy_hc1.htm

      Sergio:
      My favourite astronaut (or better cosmonaut) has always been Vladimir Komarov. He was one of the first selection in Russia, together with Yuri Gagarin, the first man to ever fly in space.

      Komarov was the first man to fly to space twice, and unfortunately he also has the record of being the first man to die in a space mission. His second (and last) mission was the first mission of the Soyuz vehicle, the same one that is still being used today and that Tim will use to go to space.
      He had a lot of failures, he battled through all of them like a real hero. And he almost managed to survive to the mission, but the last failure was too much.
      Hi sacrifice was very important to the space program, because it taught people that space is a dangerous environment and that you never have to rush. Things have to be always prepared very cautiously, because some errors can really be fatal

    • Photo: Jonathan Scott

      Jonathan Scott answered on 6 Oct 2015:

      I always found Michael Collins very interesting – he stayed in orbit around the moon when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the first ever landing. While Armstrong and Aldrin became incredibly famous, he did not, but his story is fascinating. While he was waiting in orbit, he would lose contact with everyone (NASA on Earth, and Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon) each time he traveled around the back side of the moon, so he was totally alone and didn’t know what was happening on the moon surface.

    • Photo: Beth Healey

      Beth Healey answered on 6 Oct 2015:

      For me I guess Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story… second to that would be Armstrong 😉

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