The Canadian astronaut prepares to launch after a nine-year wait

MONTREAL – Friday, July 20, lying on his back in front of 300 people, Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques gently bent his legs and took them pushed against his chest

"Imagine that you are an astronaut, sitting like that, and that the engine [rocket] is on," he said, speaking in French to the audience of children and adults from the Montreal Science Center. He quickly jumped to his feet and motioned to a nearby big screen, which featured a video of a Soyuz spacecraft on a Russian Soyuz rocket in Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

Saint-Jacques, 48, paused as rocket video took off, surrounding the audience in staccato sound waves. (He just saw a Soyuz actually take off last month, when he was a member of the rescue crew for Expedition 56/57.) "This is not very fast, but it speeds up, it's accelerating, "he continued. "It goes at 2, 3, 4, 20, 25 times the speed of sound." [Touring Baikonur: The Town Behind the Famed Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan]

Soyuz is Santiago's ticket to space after nine years of waiting in the field, giving presentations like this one all over the country. Canada is a minor partner in the International Space Station program, which allocates "airtime" based on the amount of money or in-kind contributions each partner provides. His small contribution means that astronauts rarely fly; the last was Chris Hadfield, who commanded the station during expedition 35 in 2013.

A decade of d & # 39; waiting pay

The visit of St. James to the space museum was deliberately scheduled for July 20, the 49th anniversary of the first landing on the Human Moon by Apollo 11 in 1969, said museum officials at Space.com. Coincidentally, July 20 is also exactly five months before the planned takeoff of St. James Expedition 58 on December 20.

Canada wakes up quickly knowing that one of its own will finally fly back into space. Canadian journalists are making so many demands in Saint-Jacques these days that his Canadian Space Agency media team has not responded to Space.com's request for an interview in Montreal. The CSA is also organizing a series of "Media Days" in a Moscow training center in August, but requests for TV time with St. James have quickly exceeded the agency's ability to accommodate journalists from the US. other types of media.

The CSA anticipated these demands on its time and m generously granted me a half-hour interview in March for me to have material to shoot during the six-month space mission of Saint-Jacques. They also found space for a media tour of the European Space Agency in Kazakhstan in June, organizing multiple interviews with Saint-Jacques during my stay.

In the March interview, Saint-Jacques explained that he had been entrusted with the co-pilot's seat by hand in the Soyuz. This assignment is a huge coup for a first thief, and even though Saint-Jacques did not say it, it's probably a recognition of his many years of coaching at the NASA

"I will be the co-pilot for this launch, so it's a very big responsibility," said Saint-Jacques in an unpublished part of the Moscow telephone interview, in English. "C & # That's why I spend half of my time here for a year and a half, learning to fly the Soyuz, that's my first responsibility, it will be a great thing, and it will be done in 7 minutes. " [19659005] In this interview, St. James speaks in general terms of what he will be asked to do at the station.It will be about 50 percent of science – including a series of medical and psychological experiments 50 per cent of interviewees in Kazakhstan in June, officials from the US space & # 39; ASCs said they were asking NASA to make the most of Santiago's time in space. This means that he can be assigned to demanding tasks like an exit in space, or use the station's robotic arm, Canadarm2, to take a cargo spaceship.

"It's better not to be wrong"

In Montreal, Saint-Jacques quickly guided his audience through his activities on the space station while his family watched him closely. In the front row were his wife, Véronique Morin, and their three young children. One of the boys played with a paper plane. From time to time, one of his children shouted at Saint-Jacques on stage. One day, their father shouted at his offspring in French: "That's right! The audience laughed.

Santiago was only 5 or 6 years old when he took in pictures taken by Earth astronauts from outer space, he told the audience. He wanted to become an astronaut, but his lens was so far away that he felt like he was heading for a distant star, he explained – but he was counting on everything, thinking of what to study, what career continue, even to eat.

At the beginning of his career, Saint-Jacques held positions as an astrophysicist, an engineer and, finally, a doctor working in a remote region of northern Quebec. He learned half a dozen languages. After being selected as a Canadian astronaut by Jeremy Hansen and him in 2009, Saint-Jacques participated in underwater training – in caves and in the Arctic – to get used to harsh environments. Hansen, a former fighter pilot, also helped St. Jacques to train in flight.

"Flying, is learning to think in astronaut," says Saint-Jacques in French. He said that it is very difficult to concentrate in a jet plane by wearing an oxygen mask, keeping an eye on the panels and having 10 people talking to your ear at the same time. "There is no button" break ", it's not a game," he continues. "If you make a mistake, well …" he paused dramatically. "It's better not to make mistakes."

Towards the end of the presentation, Saint-Jacques knelt and gently slammed his fist against the stage – touching the wood for luck while he was talking about his regular flight. "After all this, we will take off in five months," he said. "Just the complexity, the difficulty of the space environment, bangs his head."

He spent 10 minutes answering questions from the audience. The last speaker, a small child, stuttered for almost 30 seconds in shyness. "Um, um, what's your favorite color?" the child ends up screaming in English, pulling a laugh out of the audience.

Saint-Jacques, not missing a moment to promote spaceflight, seriously tells the child that it is probably the "orange sunrise" and "black of the sky". ;space". He left the scene surrounded by sympathizers and fans, quickly disappearing from the auditorium, making his last appointments before resuming training.

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