Last week I was in Luxembourg, invited by the bank Degroof Petercam, to talk about wine and space… but mostly space. A man whose voice is free, which makes the exchange as “disturbing” as it is intelligent.
In 1985 — and you’ve already had to answer these questions dozens of times — you fly into space and you take with you, for the first time, wine…
“I was first with the Soviet Union, then with the Americans. When I arrived with them, I realised Coca-Cola was going to go into space… I said I was going to do something anyway. I contacted Professor Pascal Ribéreau-Gayon, who at the time was the big name in oenology in the world — he is Bordelais, of course — so that he could imagine real experiments — not essential because you will have noticed that in space, you don’t do anything essential ?
The feedback seems fascinating…
“Astronauts do experiments on the vestibular system or other things that we already did in the 1980s. It’s a dressing to make people think we are doing science. We are doing it, but not truly innovative or constructive science… The professor built a certain number of experiments on grape musts, which allowed us to bring wine into space without saying we were bringing wine into space. Without, once more, being an arrogant Frenchman…
The experiments had been approved by the flight committee. I began training. Six months later, France’s Minister of Foreign Trade, Édith Cresson, said it wasn’t possible — that the image of France was about high technology, not wine… The experiments were taken off the mission.
I had a friend, who had gone to test pilot school with me, who put me in touch with a technician at Cape Canaveral so he could hide a bottle of wine on the shuttle. Which he did. When it came back, I retrieved the half bottle. It’s not very glorious. As long as I was at the National Centre for Space Studies and a government employee, I didn’t talk about it.
Today, experiments are once again being carried out at the initiative of a Luxembourg-based space start-up, Space Cargo Unlimited — actually the holding company of the French firm Space Biology Unlimited — which sent a Château Petrus on a round trip to space…
It’s more for the image than anything else! It has no real value. Pure publicity. From a scientific standpoint, absolutely no interest. It’s the same nonsense as those stories about bottles that spent six months sailing across the oceans… The less wine is shaken, the better it keeps.
What happens in space is this: since a little air is trapped inside the bottle, in weightlessness that air mixes thoroughly with the liquid, as they have the same density. It creates foam inside the bottle. Any fool can understand that wine turned into foam for a while is not good.
Steven Nagel, Shannon Lucid, Patrick Baudry (standing) and the sultan ben Salman ben Abdulaziz Al-Saud. John Creighton, Daniel Brandenstein and John Fabian (stting) before the launch of Discovery in 1985.
(Photo: Nasa/JSC)
So, in 1985, you spent a week flying aboard Discovery. What do you say about it today, nearly 40 years later ?
“It was an important chapter in my life. It was a dream — I wanted to go to space. I thought it was impossible. Being French in the 1970s, you could dream about space, but it didn’t change much. In the end, I had that privilege.
I’d been dreaming of it since I was four years old. I worked hard in school to always be among the top students, went to the Air Force Academy to become a fighter pilot, then took the exam to become a test pilot, and later went through CNES selection — 2,000 candidates for two spots. I was chosen. At the moment of selection, I started to believe it could really happen.”
The question is not trivial. Recently in Luxembourg, young people were able to take their first zero-gravity flight, and among the European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut selection, there is a Belgo-Luxembourgish candidate — the sector is developing…
“What sector? Useful space, like satellites, telecoms, observation, that’s all very good, but space is about exploration. It’s about sending humans in situ to places we’ve never been, to study these new locations and understand what they are in relation to us, Earthlings.
What fascinates me are the transport vehicles. Once a rocket has worked ten times, it no longer interests me. The man I admire is Elon Musk — it’s certainly not the ESA President, Josef Aschbacher…”
What is missing from European ambition ?
“It’s 2023, and Europe is still incapable of sending a human into space! Soon, we’ll also be unable to launch a satellite into orbit, despite what Ariane has cost us. Fortunately, there are Italians, Germans, and some French working on small rockets, but you’re not going to launch ten-ton satellites with those things ! The fact that Europe positioned itself with the capacity to launch satellites was important. But that was another era.”
Today, in France — though I think this is general — all the brightest students coming out of Polytechnique and other top schools used to spend one or two years abroad and then return to join Airbus, Aérospatiale, Dassault… Today, they still go abroad… but they stay there. So we’re left with the less capable. We’re not going to dominate the world… Over the past ten years, I could tell you about ten projects that were once hailed as revolutionary and ready… and that nobody talks about anymore !
Are there no longer any European technologies that capture your interest ?
“No. Nations invest in large projects that require huge funding, and when it really matters, no one follows through… We should have been established on the Moon since 1995… It’s 2023… And yet, the investment in the International Space Station exceeds 200–220 billion dollars! It’s a question of vision and the quality of the politicians leading the nations.
The first time I was offered a ministerial position, I refused: I had a serious job! We were developing the A330, and I wasn’t going to leave the A330 to go play the entertainer in front of people who understand nothing about it. I’m no longer in the military, I no longer fight wars, but I am a citizen and I care about the life of my country. Those who work hard and struggle to make ends meet ask themselves these questions…”
Source : Paperjam.lu
