Thursday 19 May 2016

Congratulations, Future Commander Dr. Gerst!

Once more I have to interrupt my travel posts about Jersey; this time, not with a book review (although I have another one prepared), but because of the first news item that came up last night when I was watching Germany's main news program on telly:

 Dr. Alexander Gerst will be the first German to command the ISS (International Space Station)!

 This was announced yesterday during a visit German chancellor Angela Merkel made to the European Astronaut Center in Cologne. You can read more about it here on ESA's page.
Photo nicked from the Deutsche Welle website
Maybe you remember I wrote about Dr. Gerst before; it was in August last year when I posted about Spätzle in Space. I was so pleased to see this as the first news story last night - it is nice to hear something good in the middle of so many bad news day after day!

I don't know him personally (although I wish I did), but every impression I've gathered of Dr. Gerst so far has been good. He seems a kind, down-to-earth (pun intended) man with true enthusiasm for everything he does, and a sense of humour as well.

He turned 40 at the beginning of this month - what a special birthday gift it must have felt to receive the nomination as commander! The mission is still two years away (May to November 2018), but I bet Dr. Gerst won't have a minute of boredom until then :-)

Herzlichen Glückwunsch, Herr Dr. Gerst!  
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9 comments:

  1. ADRIAN19 May 2016 at 10:40

    Congratulations. Now if he could take Cameron with him that would be wonderful.

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    1. Librarian19 May 2016 at 19:31

      One of Dr. Gerst's jobs as Commander will be to keep up the crew's morale... would he be able to do that with Cameron aboard, I wonder?

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    2. Nan4 June 2016 at 00:25

      I laughed right out loud at this!

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    3. Librarian4 June 2016 at 08:52

      :-)

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  2. Graham Edwards19 May 2016 at 11:48

    That really is Good News for a change.

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  3. Thickethouse.wordpress19 May 2016 at 12:08

    Wonderful news! I had so much fun seeing the photos every day when Scott Kelly was commander of the ISS. I know you are really interested in Space. What institute did he study at? The one in Stuttgart? Paul was a mitarbeiter at the Institute for space flight there in '73-'74 when John Argyris was the director. Lovely memories of being young and exploring Europe!

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  4. Thickethouse.wordpress19 May 2016 at 12:09

    And, of course, I send best wishes and congratulations to Dr. Gerst, too!

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    1. Librarian19 May 2016 at 19:33

      Thank you, Kristi!
      Dr. Gerst's biography on the ESA website says that he studied in Karlsruhe, Wellington (NZ) and Hamburg; not in Stuttgart.
      I sometimes go to the ISS page, too, for updates, and when someone or something grabs my attention in particular, I might do so every day for a while.

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