Remarks on ESA Space Training course

Leo Metcalfe has been one of the Irish applicants to the European astronaut selection in the beginning of the nineties. He writes about his ESA Space Training:

I attended the PRO TOURA Space organised "ESA Space Training" 2-day course at the European Astronaut Centre (EAC) in Cologne on September 1 and 2, 2005. I am myself an ESA staff member, working in the unmanned science programme at the European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) near Madrid in Spain, but I attended this training as a private individual.

The course was excellent, absolutely first rate. In saying this I reflect the fact that the EAC staff clearly took the exercise entirely seriously. They were delivering elements of their nominal "product" - astronaut training - to this group of 8 individuals, and the experience was completely authentic. It was rightly taken for granted that the trainees would bring a similar level of commitment to the very intensive two day of training. Although the trainees themselves came from diverse backgrounds it was clear at every moment that they also fully participated in the authenticity of the exercise.

Through these two days one came to appreciate with immediacy the sustained concentration and effort that is evidently required of astronauts to master the huge range of tasks that subsist within a manned space mission. I came away with a renewed respect for the sustained focus and professionalism that is required of them and of the people who train them. Activities on these two days spanned representative medical tests, physiological demonstrations, quite intensive "class-room" training, hands-on exercises using the actual astronaut training equipment and flight-simulation and system simulation models (sometimes redundant flight-spare units), Space Station docking procedures, and sub-aqua activities in the Extravehicular Activity (EVA) training facility (Hydrolab). Quite an intensive two days!

I congratulate my ESA colleagues, and PRO TOURA Space, on an excellent and ground breaking initiative to communicate and share space activities with the community in general, and I wish them continued success in this valuable enterprise.

I would recommend this training to anyone as a fully authentic exposure to key parts of the Human Space flight infrastructure.

Leo Metcalfe