To be an astronaut

Jean-François Clervoy

• Taste of adventure • Accepting the risks • Extraordinary sensations • Technical challenges • Logistic challenges • Physiological challenges • Psychological challenges • Team work • Camping trip life style • Training • Earth ambassador role

• Taste of adventure • selection process • Previous jobs:

• scientists • engineers • operators

• Accepting the risks • High energy • Vacuum • Radiation • Psychological

Extraordinairy sensations • Huge power during take-off • Awesome view of the Earth • Black sky in day light • Weightlessness

• Technical challenges • Space rendezvous • Space walking • Piloting tasks

• Logistics challenges

•Physicians: - some used to sick patients - some used to healthy patients - searching weaknesses of the candidates - searching solutions for the astronaut

•Selection: - discovery of your health details - feeling like in a show room - good results - bad results •Certification

- preflight - premedication? - bad news or no news? - in flight monitoring - post flight - yearly exams • crew medical officer • being a guinea pig • longitudinal study

Being a guinea pig

Space flight physiology •visible effects:

• accelerations • eye flashes • Motion sickness • facial edema • headaches • urinary blockage • intestinal blockage

•hidden effects • Loss of calcium • dehydration • radiations (cosmic)

Countermeasures

• anti- G suit pre- reentry

• phendex

• tylenol • probe • preflight enema

• calcium, penguin suit • fluid loading pre- reentry • Dosimetry monitoring

• Psychological challenges • Confinement • Isolation • Crisis (failures) management

Fear facing the unknown,

not knowing what’s next

Controlling it

knowing where we go, and why

Team work:

• goal = common vision • Competence + communication = trust • Tasks sharing = mutual dependence

Training “prepare for the worst and

hope for the best”

Camping life style

Astronauts are Earth ambassadors

“… let’s keep the ocean as a renewable source for a sustained, fertile and diverse life. This is vital for our future…”

Jean-François Clervoy, ESA astronaut, ambassador of ‘Te mana o te moana’

Astronauts are explorers at the service of humanity…

…but , before all…

…they are men and women who need Support from their human peers Neil

Armstrong