Last night, I went to a talk called Out of This World: An Astronaut Encounter at the Allan Scott Auditorium at UniSA. It was part of the Southern Hemisphere Space Studies program, presented by UniSA and the International Space University, and sponsored by the Australian Space Agency. The speakers were Katherine Bennell-Pegg, who has just been trained as Australia's first female astronaut, and Soyeon Yi from South Korea, who has spent 11 days traveling to and from, as well as living in, the International Space Station. The conversation was facilitated by Anna Cordrey from the International Space University.
Before the talk, I bumped into Katherine in her uniform outside the auditorium, and I asked her if I could take a photo of her. I think she thought I wanted to take a selfie with her, but I literally wanted to take a photo of her alone, which she may have thought was weird, but she didn’t mind. I was going to post the photo on the Facebook page of a society that I manage, but, as you can see, there was a bit of writing on the wall behind her that said "Barbara Hanrahan Building," and I didn’t like how clumsy it looked, so I decided not to use it.
I went to the talk with my friend Andrew, and when we arrived inside the auditorium, a whole chunk of the seats were reserved for UniSA employees, students of the International Space University, and younger students who were on a space camp. We managed to get two seats relatively high up and a little to the left. While we were waiting for the talk to start, I looked at all the people in the room and said to Andrew, "Do you think, out of all these people here, there is someone who has killed another person?"
He sort of laughed, and then I looked at him and said, "Have you?" I was, of course, only joking, but he just looked back at me and said, "I'm not telling you that." My heart stopped for a moment, but then he started laughing. He then went on to say it was highly unlikely that someone in the room had killed anyone because there are so few murders in Adelaide.
That is actually not true—statistically, we have a high murder rate, but I suppose most of those murders are historical now. He then went on to say the most likely way you'd be in the same room with someone who had taken a life would be if there was a Vietnam Vet or someone who had been to war and had killed someone that way. I thought that was an interesting point.
After a professor from the university and the head of the Australian Space Agency gave introductions, the three women sat at the front and started their conversation. I had heard a bit about Katherine because she has garnered a fair bit of publicity as the first person to train as an astronaut under the Australian flag. During the talk, she explained that, because she is a dual UK and Australian citizen, she was able to apply to the European Space Agency's call for astronauts. She was one of 25 people selected out of 22,500 applicants. She will be Australia's first female astronaut.
The Aussies I've heard about who have gone before her, like Philip Chapman, Paul Scully-Power, and Andy Thomas, all trained under different countries' space programs or agencies. Katherine will be Australia's first. She didn’t go into much detail about her personal life, but I know she is married with children, and I am sure it has been difficult throughout her career in STEM to manage a family as well. She is 40 years old.
Soyeon Yi is from South Korea and was the first Korean to fly in space. She spent a total of 11 days in space in 2008 and is now 46 years old. She was quite funny and seemed to have a good sense of humour, talking about things like going to the toilet in space, which I didn't really find funny but she had the audience laughing out loud a couple of times.
Both Katherine and Soyeon talked about the training they undertook to become astronauts, which involved things like learning about food in space, survival training, and even learning a bit about trades because they would be responsible for fixing things on the International Space Station.
The talk itself only went for about an hour and didn’t go too in-depth, but it was a good snapshot of an up-and-coming astronaut and someone who had spent a week and a half on the International Space Station. I was lucky to listen to two highly successful women, both of whom I found to be inspirational and empowering.
As the talk finished, I said to Andrew that I was in awe of these amazing women, but I myself felt like a complete failure at 43, just really restarting my life in comparison to everything they have achieved. Andrew is going through a transitionary phase too, so I came up with the idea that we should both write a letter to ourselves about what we hope to achieve by the end of this year. I will keep his, and he can keep mine, and then, at the end of the year, we can give them back to each other and open them. He took a bit of convincing, but I eventually twisted his arm, and next week I am going around to his house, and we are going to do it.
When I got home last night, I told Mum about the conversation I had with Andrew about being in the same room as a killer, and she added that another, more likely form of killer than a murderer would be someone who has killed someone in a car accident. I thought about that for a brief moment, but then I realised I had had enough of that morbid topic.
Yesterday during the day, I had been at the hairdresser, and I was telling my hairdresser how I was going to the talk. I told her that during question time, I wanted to ask them if astronauts had had sex on the International Space Station. Now, I would actually never ask that question—it is completely inappropriate, especially asking women. But I don’t think the question is entirely unreasonable. I once saw a snippet on the news that joked about astronauts having sex on the space station, and they claimed it had never happened before. But I would put money on it that it has. I have seen some of the astronauts that go up there, and there are some good-looking people, both men and women, and all with scientific minds. I am certain they would be curious to see what happens in zero gravity.
