Plumbing and electrical skills more useful than ‘genius’ in space

The skills of a plumber, electrician, crane driver and paramedic are far more useful than "genius" when it comes to exploring in space. "Oh, and a sense of humour – essential!" says Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli.

Mr Nespoli, who is a Science Week guest speaker at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology on Wednesday, says there is a common misconception that astronauts are "crazy scientists or geeks".

“Strapping yourself to a rocket that is capable of exploding like an atomic bomb at any second isn’t really something that is for anyone who thinks about it too much,” he says. “It’s an unforgiving environment, which can kill you if you make the slightest mistake.”

Nespoli, currently training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow, Russia, for his third trip to the International Space Station, is a qualified professional engineer, pilot and an advanced diver,who served in the Italian army between 1977 and 1984. He says he always wanted to be an astronaut, but did not begin to do anything about it until he was 26.

“At school, I was not very bright, I could only do well at what I liked and I was pretty lazy,” Nespoli, who was brought up in Milan, adds. “I was drafted into the army for one year’s compulsory military service at 19, and I found that I liked it and I stayed on.”

The special forces training, combined with his enthusiasm for "taking things apart and putting them together again", served him well when it came to preparation for space missions. Nespoli joined the European Space Agency's (ESA) astronaut centre in Cologne, Germany, in 1995 as an engineer, and moved to Nasa in the US in 1996. His first space flight was his two-week Esperia mission on the space shuttle's STS-120 in 2007, and he returned to the International Space Station in 2010 for for a 160-day mission. His third visit to the ISS in May 2017 will be for five months.

Looking at Earth from space, he says there is “plenty of evidence” of climate change, “but I think the Earth is stronger than we are – it is 4.5 billion years old – and we will destroy ourselves if we keep going the way we are, while the planet survives”.

Mr Nespoli is due to speak at GMIT at 10am and 11.30am on Wednesday, as part of Galway Science and Technology Festival , which continues until November 22nd. Members of the public are welcome.