The man who has done it all
James Perry, Editing Director
On a recent visit to the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Swiss astronaut Claude Nicollier took the time to answer some questions on his career, advice, and thoughts for the future.
Q: Could you briefly introduce yourself?
CN: I’m Claude Nicollier from Switzerland, I just turned 80 years of age last year so I’m no longer a young man – but I was in the past, like everyone! I was born in 1944 at the end of the last world war, which Switzerland was not really involved in. I had a happy childhood in Vevey, near Lausanne in the West, French-speaking part of Switzerland. Very early on I really had a passion for airplanes, for the sky. I looked at the planets, the moon and star clusters with a small telescope and I really liked aviation too, building model airplanes. I studied physics in Lausanne and astrophysics in Geneva, for me it was natural to go in the direction that corresponded to my passion for the sky. For aviation, I was happy that in Switzerland we have this militia system where every man has to serve in the armed forces. So, at 20 years of age you go to the “École de recrues” as they call it, so basic training. I was successful in reaching the status of squadron pilot in first the de Havilland Venom, then later the Hawker Hunter. In parallel, I was an astrophysicist for several years and an Air Force pilot once I had my degree and my license. As an Air Force pilot, I had 6 weeks of training a year, so every two months one week of training flying airplanes, and the rest was doing research in astrophysics. That was a happy combination of activities which corresponded to my passions.
I had a huge interest for space, when I was 25 years of age in 1969 we had Apollo 11, which was of course a huge inspiration for me, but the Americans and Soviets were the ones doing space. But a few years later, in 1975, we heard about the invitation by the US to Europe to participate in the next human space program, which was the space shuttle. There was a selection in 1977 which finished in 1978 with the selection of the first three European astronauts: Wubbo Ockels from the Netherlands, Ulf Merbold from Germany and myself. We were sent to Houston to train on the space shuttle and I did a lot of training for many years, in fact for 12 years as I had my first flight in 1992. That was the first group of ESA astronauts and there was zero priority for us in Houston. The Challenger flight delayed my flight from 1986 to ’92, but afterwards, I had three more missions which were in 1993, ’96 and ’99, including two visits to Hubble in 1993 and ’99. These were of course wonderful missions for me: I had been an astronomer, became an astronaut and now must go fix Hubble! These were dream missions for me, with a spacewalk on my last one in ’99 to replace the main computer on Hubble and one of the fine guidance sensors. For me, this was a highlight of my career.
I stayed a little longer in Houston after my last flight, until 2005. There was a possibility of a 5th mission but it was abandoned after the Columbia accident in 2003. I came back to Europe, Germany for a year to work at the astronaut centre in Cologne, and then to Switzerland to teach at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) – I got a position as a professor there. I taught from 2007 until last year, 15 years of teaching aerospace engineering at EPFL. I stopped teaching full-time last year, but I’m still asked for some lectures because I have experience of human spaceflight, which nobody else in Switzerland has. We have another one coming up who was selected in 2022, the medical doctor Marco Sieber. So here I am, I’m doing outreach in the field of space and giving some lectures in Zürich and Lausanne, and that’s my life.
Q: Most people your age would be retired, so why are you still doing all these things?
CN: It’s a passion. I have always had a passion for space, a passion for astrophysics and for airplanes. And for me, as long as I’m physically and mentally able I will continue to share my experience, which is rather unique. You only get a little more than 600 out of 8 billion inhabitants of planet Earth who have been to space. It’s a very unique thing and I feel the responsibility to share it. That’s why I accepted to come here to Delft, this wonderful technical university, which is very highly ranked worldwide for its teaching and research. For me, there was no question that I would accept, and I accept many other requests of this kind. I go to schools and universities, and other groups ask me to talk about sometimes the technical or scientific aspect, sometimes the more human aspect of spaceflight. It’s difficult, it’s risky, it’s expensive, so you need to manage the whole program such that you have a high likelihood of success. There are recipes for that which can be useful to managers and other groups of people. As long as I can share it I do, because I feel it’s a responsibility.
“There is nobody who can tell you how precious the earth is as well as an astronaut” – Prof. Henri Werij
Q: How did you reach such sought-after positions?
CN: I worked hard and I had passion, but at the same time there were several career paths open and I took them and sometimes by chance, it worked. I think this is the way life is. If you have only one field of interest then you go in that direction. I had several, and I made my way through these different opportunities to maximize the opportunity to be productive and useful, at the same time as taking pleasure.
Q: Most people decide they’re going to go for aircraft or space, but you just did both!
CN: Yes, I picked both and since an early age I really had an interest in both disciplines. I had a curiosity about natural phenomena and flying an airplane was something I always wanted to do. I was privileged that I could do both at a pretty high level. Flying at a ground attack squadron in Switzerland – it’s not that easy to handle a jet fighter if you fly low altitude in the mountains! Although it’s fascinating, if you like flying it’s wonderful. I was also an airline pilot with Swiss Air for a couple of years, before the selection of astronauts.
After the Challenger accident in 1986, I was an ESA astronaut but there were no shuttle flights for three years, so ESA sent me to Empire Test Pilot School in Boscombe Down, Great Britain. That was a wonderful chapter in my pilot education because test pilot school is really hard and you learn enormous amounts. Not only about flying different kinds of airplanes, from the Hawk to the BAC 1-11, which was an airliner, but also communicating the results of tests in a very rigorous manner. Whether it’s verbal or written communication, it’s extremely strict. For me, this was wonderful! Testing the handling characteristics, the performance, avionics, and the ability to accomplish the mission, whether that’s military or civilian; that was a wonderful school.
Q: What is the hardest thing you ever had to do?
CN: The spacewalk I did, 8 hours and 10 minutes on the 23rd December 1999. Spacewalking is really hard. You need to be extremely focused: you are in an environment where you are extremely exposed and there’s hardly any room for mistakes. In terms of the intensity of focus to do the right thing, that’s one of the hardest things I ever had to do. Because you really want to be sure you do the right thing! To be extremely concentrated on a task for over eight hours is both mentally and physically difficult. It was hard, but it was successful.
Q: You waited quite a long time to get to space for the first time. Did you ever get impatient?
CN: No, in fact it was kind of a pioneering time for European astronauts. We had no priority over there for quite a while. We could only train on the scientific experiments to be performed on the shuttle, as so-called “payload specialists”. Then I was the first non-American mission specialist who had responsibility as far as the shuttle was concerned. At some point they let me do robotics, but no spacewalking training which only came later. So there were a lot of barriers. I can understand the Americans, they had just completed the extremely successful and difficult Apollo program. It was their pride, and suddenly three Europeans were landing there because of a decision at the level of headquarters of NASA and ESA. The management of NASA was a little hard on us, and it took quite a while to prove we could do the job like any American astronaut. I worked pretty hard over there, I didn’t want to be considered the one who was taking it easy because he was only there because of decisions by headquarters. No, I worked pretty hard.
The Challenger accident also delayed my flight quite a bit. After that, the idea is always to specialise in one area where you are one of the most experienced, and I was given the task of trying to understand the dynamic and electrodynamic properties of electrically conducting cables in space. I worked a lot in the simulator to figure out how we could deploy a satellite at the end of a conducting cable upwards or downwards – then you have the gravity gradient that gives an automatic tension on the tether. I worked on that quite a bit, together with another astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, a colleague of my class of astronauts of 1980, and Jeff Hoffman, who is now a professor of aerospace engineering at MIT the same as I am at EPFL. We were a small group of specialists who got two missions with tethered satellites, which was my first mission and then the repeat four years later. It was always this group of three: Franklin Chang-Diaz, Jeff Hoffman and myself. On the first Hubble mission, I worked pretty hard and I did well enough that I was asked to go back a second time. Hubble was another area where I had been an expert, together with others of course.
I think that’s a way to be successful. Select an area where you will become one of the experts, one of the masters, then people will come to you. That’s a lesson for everyone.
Q: And when your missions did come, did you feel the pressure to perform?
CN: Yes, I would say the whole 25 years I spent over there in Houston was life under pressure. It’s a competitive environment and you need to do everything you can to be successful on every mission. That means a lot of focus, concentration, doing all you can to get the things in your head that need to be in your head, and knowing how you find what you cannot have in your head. You must know the procedures and all the documentation so that you are never in a situation where you say “Oh my God, how am I going to do this?”. You need to be prepared. And that’s pressure. I wouldn’t say it was stress, but it was pressure. You try to avoid stress by being well-prepared, that’s a general rule. Stress is something negative which makes you less likely to be successful. Whatever you do, if you are stressed you’re not in the best shape to be successful. Pressure is okay, stress is to be avoided and you avoid stress by being well prepared.
Q: Do you think that flying helped you prepare for your work in space?
CN: I was a part-time fighter pilot in Switzerland but I was never a professional military pilot. Again, you had to do all you could to prepare your missions to be likely to be successful. We had no GPS at that time, and we had to attack simulated targets anywhere in Switzerland. Four airplanes, bad weather, a low ceiling, rain and you had about 20 minutes to get to the other side of Switzerland, with low altitude flying for the last stretch. Without GPS, you need to prepare the geography and you have to have this in your head because you cannot look at a map while you’re flying at 800km/h close to the ground. So, that was a wonderful learning experience in the need for preparation.
Q: Unlike Hubble, the James Webb space is too far away to be serviced. Do you think that’s problematic?
CN: I think we are happy that Hubble was serviceable because it needed it to be productive, especially with the optical problem we had initially. The second time I went, which was in 1999, we had gyroscope problems and the spacecraft was no longer able to point to celestial targets. Hubble was serviceable, and thank God it was because it needed it! James Webb is not serviceable and so far has not needed servicing because it works fine. But we can’t make statistics on only two samples! I think in general serviceability is needed in the future, not necessarily by humans but by robots. If Webb had gone to the L2 Lagrange point of the sun-earth system and would have had a problem, I think that NASA would have thought of a way to get there, maybe with the Crew Dragon capsule, and somehow do something. Because NASA wants to have success in the mission, and when there is a major problem, like was the case for Hubble, it is not easy to find a fix for that. I’m not only talking about the mission to install the optical correctors, but the design and building of the optical correctors was hard too. But NASA had this persistence, we wanted to have the Hubble working. If James Webb had not worked properly somehow I’m sure that NASA would have done something so that we could have serviced it although it was not designed for it.
I think serviceability is a big thing for the future. Not only for telescopes, but for satellites to extend their life with refueling and maybe exchange of some components. Space is expensive in general, the price of Webb was about $10 billion. You can imagine that if it arrived at L2 and didn’t work that would not be acceptable. I think mainly robotic serviceability but humans as well. Beyond Hubble, we had another important human involvement in a scientific instrument, an alpha magnetic spectrometer (AMS) on the International Space Station. Luca Parmitano from Italy and an American, Drew Morgan, saved the AMS. The cooling system was not working; they planned spacewalks and they fixed it. So Hubble is not the only example where humans have significantly served science. Scientists have a classical criticism about human spaceflight because it costs a lot and draws a lot of resources from space agencies. But the AMS was not planned to be serviced and it was saved by human intervention, so that could happen with Webb.
Q: Do you think astronauts will have the same role in the future, or will increased automation do more and more?
CN: Human capability is somewhat limited because of the places we can go. Going to L2 is something we could have imagined, but it was not planned. Going beyond low earth orbit is already a big thing. We see with the Artemis program how difficult it is to go to the moon or Mars, which is Mr. Musk’s dream, but also the plan of NASA. That’s why I think we need to think about robotic servicing, because you can send robots for long-duration flights very far away. I think we need to continue human spaceflight capabilities, including not only working in labs, like the International Space Station, but also living in low earth orbit, maybe GEO, possibly beyond to the moon and Mars – but that’s for the future!
Q: What was the best thing about being in space?
CN: If you believe in the value of human space exploration as I do, being part of it was a huge satisfaction and privilege. As an astronomer, I have a huge motivation to understand the physical processes of the universe and our origins. When you look at the faraway galaxies, you see the universe as it was a long time in the past, all the way to 13.7 billion years ago, when the Big Bang happened. So, being fascinated by the knowledge of physical processes of the universe, the formation of galaxies and the way the universe evolved, from the Big Bang all the way until now, and to have the opportunity to go into space and continue this knowledge with my work on Hubble. Of course, I did this together with others; my colleagues on the mission, but also all those who supported us from the ground in the flight control room, and the ones who designed the instruments that we installed on Hubble. For me that was a huge satisfaction to be part of the gathering of knowledge about the universe. That was exactly what I wanted to do with my life.
Q: Did you feel very detached from Earth and the rest of humanity?
CN: When you are in low earth orbit you still feel very close to humanity. You have communication nearly all the time, you have your colleagues, and you accomplish the mission according to a clear goal and a near obsession to be successful. I think people who go to the moon will feel a little detached but not completely, because the Earth will still be dominant in the sky. But where there will be a difference is for astronauts who will go beyond the moon to Mars, then the Earth will become a small blue dot in the sky together with a lot of stars and a few other planets.
There’s the huge activity of looking at the earth, and that fascinating view. When you work in low earth orbit, particularly on the Hubble and during a spacewalk, you don’t spend too much time looking at the earth because you have your tasks. You must focus on what you are doing. But whenever there is an opportunity, especially at the end of the day when you have completed your specific operational tasks, you look at the earth and you look at the sky, which is beautiful. But you are close to the earth, and you feel connected with it.
Q: What’s your opinion on the progress for people with disabilities to go to space, such as the amputee John McFall?
CN: I think it’s a great idea, the idea to be inclusive. This is a goal to broaden inclusivity. For many years it was only men, then it became women, Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space, by the Soviets in 1963. Twenty years later we had Sally Ride from the US and we had a few women astronauts at ESA, although not that many. That was a trend towards greater inclusivity, and that was very obvious. Like we do here on Earth, we are now trying to give people with disabilities, whether it’s mental or physical, the ability to do as much as they can as humans. I think it’s a great step for the ESA to try to bring astronauts with disabilities into space, of course with some limitations. I don’t think McFall will be able to go spacewalking, but he will be able to do robotics and scientific experiments and be productive in space. I think this is wonderful. I am entirely for this and proud of ESA for doing that.
Q: Do you think there will always be barriers to overcome?
CN: I think we are only beginning, that was the first time we had an astronaut selected with a disability. The idea that a selected astronaut is a perfect person is not the case. I’m certainly not perfect… maybe Neil Armstrong was! You do need a certain level of capability to be above the line, so you can become an astronaut, and with a little bit of luck, you do. Now we open this possibility to people who have a clear limitation and will have limited access to some of the activities in space. I think, from an ethical point of view, to give the possibility for access to this very desired position is wonderful. You could have astronauts with disabilities who are tourists, but ESA hires astronauts to be productive in space and do work, and so will be the case for McFall – perhaps different work. There are a lot of activities where you are not required to use the lower part of your body a lot, you have to have your brain, arms and hands. For many activities in space, weightlessness is a condition which is better for people with disabilities in the lower part of their body because you don’t have the weight of the body on the legs. 1g, 9.81m/s2, glueing you to the ground, the chair, the sofa or the bed. I think we are opening a new area here and it’s wonderful, from an ethical point of view it’s magnificent.
Q: Do you consider yourself an inspiration?
CN: I’ve been greatly inspired by many people, and I try to do the same, especially with young people. I go to schools quite often and I talk to the children. I think I can inspire them because I have been inspired myself. I have been able to do many unique and wonderful things. There are a few things which you need in your life. You need to have a passion, and a determination to follow a certain track and not get too distracted. Then you need to be lucky – I was lucky. You can’t plan for luck, it either happens or it doesn’t. Direct your life towards a certain goal that you pursue, such that you contribute and are a useful human being. You can be useful by being an artist, a scientist, an engineer, or an architect, or because you want to help people go through life in the best possible way. If you can be productive, do be, but you must follow a certain line and not be too distracted. Follow your dreams!
Leonardo Times would like to thank Claude Nicollier for taking the time for this interview and for sharing his passion for air and spaceflight with our faculty.
