WESTBOURNE VILLAGE ASTRONAUT

Ground Control To Major Tim

Tim, 43, was a major in the Army Air Corps with more than 3,000 flying hours before he joined the European Space Agency in 2009. Even from an early age, growing up near Chichester in West Sussex, he was desperate to fly, and he achieved his dream with his local cadet force. By the age of 16 he knew he wanted to be an Army pilot. By the age of 18 he had 40 hours of flying time under his belt - ten hours as a solo pilot.

His extensive flying experience will serve him well when he has to deal with the terrifying scenario of his space capsule making a ‘ballistic re-entry’ in the atmosphere as he returns to earth in June. This essentially means the craft is plummeting  out of control, subjecting the astronauts to terrific G-forces nine times greater than the pull of gravity on Earth. He prepared for such an event in a centrifuge that spun him around immensely fast. He describes it  like an elephant sitting on your chest. You have to take short breaths. Another part of his training was learning a language a all the rocket’s controls are in Russian.He admits that learning Russian was one of the worst aspects of his training as he admits he is not a natural linguist.

As the day of the launch approaches is Tim getting nervous? The closer you get to the flight the desire to fly increases, he says. So when people ask me , “Are you nervous about flying to space?” I always answer, “Absolutely not - the thing I’m most nervous about is not flying to space.”

In the BBC 2 Horizon documentary called How To Be An Astronaut the programme not only gives an extraordinary insight into Tim’s preparations in Mocow, Cologne and Houston, but also an intimate portrait of his family life with his wife Rebecca and their two sons.

‘I married a man who loves doing exciting things with an element of danger.’ observes Rebecca in a moment of  understatement - for Tim’s job, despite the seemingly routine nature of  space flight, is exceptionally perilous. Two space rockets have exploded in the past 14 months, though fortunately no astronauts were on board.

Source: Guy Walters

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