Article
From planets to the Parliament: Vladimír Remek - MEP, Cosmonaut
Institutions - 06-07-2007 - 08:01
Vladimír Remek - MEP, Cosmonaut
These days Czech MEP Vladimír Remek spends hours listening to debates in the European Parliament. It's a far cry from the 190 hours he spent in orbit in 1978 on board the USSR's Soyuz 28 spacecraft. By doing so he made a piece of space history by being the first man in space who was neither a US nor Soviet citizen. After space he worked as a director of the Air and Space Museum in Prague and as a diplomat. In 2004 he was elected as an MEP with the European United Left / Nordic Green Left Group.
When you went into space in 1978, you were the first cosmonaut not to come from the USSR or USA. How significant was your flight for Czechoslovakia?
I belong to a generation when spaceflights were a big dream for mankind. I flew into space only 21 years after the first satellite Sputnik and seventeen years after Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. For Czechoslovakia this was a big event. When we orbited planet Earth, we listened to various short wave radio stations and heard how the name of my homeland and the names of our crew - Remek and Gubarev - were repeated in countless languages.
Did the experience of seeing earth from space influence in some way your perception of life and politics?
The way you look at our planet changes. In orbit you understand that our planet is not an endless world. The spaceship flies in an altitude of about 350 kilometres, which is not a particularly big distance. You fly around the planet in one hour and a half and during this time you realize, how fragile and limited the space is, where life is possible.
From the very beginning of civilisation people looked up at the sky and saw falling stars. Today we know that these are objects from space, which enter in an altitude of less than 150 kilometres into the atmosphere and burn. Sometimes a part of them drops on the planet surface as a meteorite. From a spaceship you see how they enter the atmosphere deep below you.
You think about a lot of things in such a moment, for instance that the perception of the world of many people - even the most powerful - is often very limited. For example it was not very long ago that people were burned on the stake for proclaiming that the world is round.
In the 60's and 70's there was a big wave of excitement about space travel. Do you think that projects such a future expedition to Mars or the discovery of new planets can generate a comparable enthusiasm among young people today?
The enthusiasm then was different, the world has moved on. In the seventies we flew into space without computers. It was a world without mobile phones, this is something we can imagine today only with difficulty. Nevertheless, for young people space is still an interesting topic. Even though I am not an economist, I think that before a possible manned mission to Mars takes place we should well calculate the costs. We should then consider whether the exploration of Mars with technical equipment is more effective.
Among other things you follow space issues in the European Parliament. What do you think about the opportunities and the potential of the European programme Galileo?
Galileo will be the first non-military navigation system. I think it has a big potential, but the EU Member States first have to find an agreement about how to finance it. Otherwise the whole project may be in jeopardy. There are also ongoing negotiations about establishing the Galileo headquarters in Prague. This would certainly be a prestigious issue and I think that Prague is a suitable candidate for such a project.
You worked as a Czech diplomat in Moscow. What should the ideal relationship between the EU and Russia be?
Ideal relationships do not exist, not even in private life. It is important to be aware of the fact, that Russia is a part of Europe. Most of its citizens live in the European part of the Russian Federation. During the last two, three centuries Russia was an important element of the development of Europe, it influenced European affairs.
Therefore I think that the European Union should refrain in its bilateral relations from often cheap criticism of the situation in Russia and deal with it without bias. For the future development of relations it is important, that the EU deals with Russia on an equal basis.
Vladimír Remek was born in 1948 in České Budějovice
REF.: 20070703STO08740