Forgotten post about Pedro Duque's interview...

Hi everybody! I'm sorry but I told you I was going to assist to an informal meeting with Pedro Duque and to a conference with Manuel Campo Vidal and I forgot to tell you about how they both went!! So in this post I'm going to talk about the Pedro Duque's one.

As you may have thought if you have read my "An Honoris Causa isn't enough" post, I was quite excited about having the chance to be in the same room as such an important person, who's been both aeronautical engineer (what I'd like to be in the future) and astronaut. But maybe I had too big expectations and that is why I'm a bit disappointed about how the meeting went... The main reason of this was that the meeting was too short (actually it didn't even reach 1 hour), in addition to the fact that it started about 20 min late.Therefore, we couldn't ask him many questions, and some of them weren't actually really important (in my opinion), compared to others we had thought of before the meeting. By the way, sometimes it was difficult for him to explain what he wanted to say, but this could have been because of two main factors:

•  first, maybe he was trying to explain it in the best way so that we could understand it
•  and second, because maybe we made a question whose answer we didn't expect and was really touchy for him (we asked something about his father and unfortunately we discovered that he isn't here any more, I don't know if you understand what I mean...I'm so sorry for that...)

Besides this, what I did like was the proximity that Pedro Duque had when he talked to us.

After this informal meeting, the "Honoris Causa" ceremony took place, but I didn't assist to it...

An "Honoris Causa" isn't enough

Hi again everybody! In today's class we talked a bit about Pedro Duque because on Friday he will receive the "Honoris Causa" Doctorate and my classmates and I are invited to go to the ceremony and to an informal meeting where we can ask him some questions. At first, I'd like to tell you at least a bit about who he is (just in case you don't already know).

Pedro Duque is the first and only Spanish astronaut that has been in outer space. He graduated with a degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the "Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Aeronáuticos" (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) when he was only 23 years old, he has received many awards during his whole life and he has worked both in the ESA (European Space Agency) and in the NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

In my opinion, it's so valuable the fact of being able to go up there. Not only having the opportunity, but also the inner strength you need to have to ignore the risks and jump into a rocket without knowing if you are ever going to come back. I guess I would feel really small (apart from afraid) if I had the opportunity of being in outer space; but maybe it would be worth it because, although he can tell us how it feels to be an astronaut, I realize it's not the same to imagine it than to really feel it. In fact, I really admire these sort of people for this kind of reasons.

Actually, it is really an honor having the possibility of being in the same room with such an astronaut, and even more if he has studied what I'm studying right now.


For more information you can just click on the following link to his biography: http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Astronauts/Pedro_Duque

Or you  can click on the following link to an interesting interview made on 2003: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp8/intduque.html