Question: Who was your favourite astronaut when you were young?

Columbus Flight Directors answered on 6 Oct 2015:

Simon:
Nice question RPA!

When I was growing up I took my inspiration from 3 astronauts:

– John Young (for flying the widest range of space vehicles: Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle!)
– Scott Musgrave (for the larget number of spacewalks ever conducted and for saving the Hubble Space Telescope)
– Eilleen Collins for being the first female shuttle commander.

Checkout this portait of John Young: the deep concentration and dedication on his face is very inspirational:

http://www.johnwyoung.org/sts1/enlarge-sts1/jy_hc1.htm

Sergio:
My favourite astronaut (or better cosmonaut) has always been Vladimir Komarov. He was one of the first selection in Russia, together with Yuri Gagarin, the first man to ever fly in space.

Komarov was the first man to fly to space twice, and unfortunately he also has the record of being the first man to die in a space mission. His second (and last) mission was the first mission of the Soyuz vehicle, the same one that is still being used today and that Tim will use to go to space.
He had a lot of failures, he battled through all of them like a real hero. And he almost managed to survive to the mission, but the last failure was too much.
Hi sacrifice was very important to the space program, because it taught people that space is a dangerous environment and that you never have to rush. Things have to be always prepared very cautiously, because some errors can really be fatal