Whether it's about falling in love or not, the mechanics of passion are well oiled: once started, its accomplishment always pushes for self-displacement. Or are we talking about a self-surpassing ?
Please accept my sincere apologies, dear English readers in advance : starting the translation of my French article, I just realise how hard it's gonna be to translate this article propely and keeping the same spirit, as it's based a lot on play on words in French. Don't hesitate, my dear English speakers to suggest any improvement you might have.
(Emma, my beautiful Emma teacher, where are you ?)
Obviously, you have seen him pretty everywhere, Thomas Pesquet is a perfect assiduous practitioner of self-displacement. With and without wings. (see, French version is better here)
Ah, this passion, when it dopamine us, dominates us.
I admit that for his previous mission in 2017, I had very little interest in this guy who played sax in socks 400 km above our heads.
(I like this in English : sax in socks - nice song)
May 2021, by pure hazard, if there is one, while running on my treadmill, (message - I 'm athletic woman, yes, yes) I stumble upon a YouTube video and discover his twist of words wrapped in a velvet voice without any sharp jeer.
Curious to find out more, I free that little blue bird by tackling all the stormy ones (translate Twitter). The bird, not chirping at anything since the end of the regatta "Vendée Globe", woke-up again and surpresed he discovers a horde of girls in infinite idolatry.
Some talk to him as if he was the love of their life, (creepy), others are passionate about questions of quantum mechanics (really ??). The boys bend over the mathematics and some weird probability calculations, torn between fascination and frustration, but in the end, very quickly we all become addicted to this life by proxy in weightlessness. Taking the height of all our earthly weights.
When you think about it, feeling liberated by the sight of humans confined in a hostile environment ! Looks like the inconfortable feeling is deeply inked.
Passionate photographers, we take out the telephoto lenses, the tripods to patiently follow the arrival of the small luminous point crossing the sky with humans living in it; our passion for this space adventure infected easily our friends also over time.
For 199 days we get up together with Thomas and Crew-2, we listen to the piece of music he choose for that day, we discover the Earth from space, we worry, we rejoice when he sends us the photo of the city where we live, or the place we were born.
199 days floating in space as a Peter Pan with Wendy and the orphans (there is always a Wendy - and Wendy will soon be the Peter Pan, you will see, and she will be Italian, stay tuned) you can find in this story all the themes of a modern tale. (I would have insisted on one more day in space, just to round it off to 200 days. Anyway - nobody asked, so I couldn't communicate my highly reasonable opinion).
To remind him the reality of life, you know the real one on Earth, the one with its "technical checks", bills to pay, gasoline to fetch (far, very far in traffic jams) they said to themselves at NASA, Space X and ESA that they were going to send him back to Earth packed in a can of Coke with 3 other astronauts, make him make a complete tour of the ISS (no seriously, I don't explain what it is anymore, I had it already done previously here), just to add 1 extra hour for the return trip. Photo mission for @thom_astro, our national pride.
And as that was not enough, they said to themselves that it was necessary to make him cross the flames of the atmosphere (harnessed in the can, are you still here ?), brake of crazy and in final bouquet, finish thrown in the Atlantic. Splashdown they call it.
How cool !
I have compiled you a few sleepless hours I spent watching the return of these 4 sweet freaks in a 3 minutes YouTube video.
So when the Press Conference was announced at the EAC (European Astronaut Center) in Cologne, Germany, I told myself that I was not going to whine because I was going to take a plane, a train, another train, a car, my feet to get there (Cologne, when there are no direct trains available, it's worse than a road to Kathmandu. I must confess that I like all this, even if it sounds like a complain. Play it again Sam !) And how I will be more than happy to do this very small displacement of myself to have the joy and the privilege to zoom my camera to these blue eyes which have imprinted so much on the imaginary film of their pupils.
Thomas is the first French Commander of the International Space Station, holding the new spacewalk duration record for a European astronaut, and since this is his wish, our fingers are crossed so that he can soon land the Moon :-)
Thank you Marie, my Editor in Chief / Abaca Press for allowing me to catapult myself there! And thank you a thousand times ESA for your warm and efficient welcome! The adventure goes on :-)
Short stories about my self displacement
Did-you know ?
What is the difference between spationaute, astronaute and cosmonaute ?
The term "astronaut" is used in the United States by NASA, but also by the space agencies of Canada (ASC) and Japan (JAXA). Derived from the Greek "ástron" (star) and "nautes" (navigator)
The term "cosmonaut" is used by the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos, from the Greek word
"Cosmos" (universe)
The term "astronaut" is used in France and more widely by the European Space Agency (ESA), a word derived from the Latin "spatium" (space).
The term "taikonaut" comes from the Chinese tàikōngrén (太空人) literally meaning "man of the great void"
If you missed Thomas' press conference I was lucky to attended, you can see it in full here:
Post Scriptum : the blonde head constantly visible at the bottom right of the screen, it's me 😱 my hairdresser is delighted that the light is thus shed on her colorist work, personally I would have preferred that I be shifted a little to the right to get out of the cameras' fields of view ... plus I move all the time ! Luckily for me, the content of Thomas' answers attracts incomparably more attention than my flowered head wagging. Some will say that I took the big head, it bursts the screen 🤪 🤪
Alpha kiss 😘
For the up-going adventure, Cosmic Kiss !
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