Bertalan Farkas, Charles Simonyi, Tibor Kapu and Gyula Cserényi were asked, among others, about how space travel is different now than before and what is expected of the astronauts of the future.
Where else would the four Hungarian astronauts have met for the first time than at the BME? Bertalan Farkas, Tibor Kapu and Gyula Cserényi, the three trained research astronauts, were all BME students, and Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian-born space tourist, is also affiliated with the institution as his father, Károly Simonyi, taught at the university for decades.
Thursday’s event was held in the hall named after the renowned physicist in Building Q of the BME campus. In addition to the university’s leaders and an audience of about 500, the event was also attended by BME alumna Orsolya Ferencz, Ministerial Commissioner for Space Research as the leader of the Hunor – Hungarian Astronaut Programme, which launched Tibor Kapu into space in the summer.
Bertalan Farkas, Gyula Cserényi, Tibor Kapu, Orsolya Ferencz, Hassan Charaf and Charles Simonyi
First, she and Hassan Charaf, the rector of the BME, greeted the audience, then Charles Simonyi gave his lecture. The software developer businessman who lived in Hungary until the age of 18 and then led the development of Word and Excel at Microsoft, among others, cited his childhood memories to illustrate why he became a space tourist.
He explained that it was not a sudden idea at all: as a child, he had already collected newspaper articles about space exploration, which he has kept ever since. He was twelve years old when Yuri Gagarin flew to space as the first man in history, and Simonyi would have been interested in everything about the mission, but he did not find much information because the technical details remained hidden and the Soviets even edited most of the photos.
Therefore, as a child he would visit the BME library that had some publications from the West, which triggered his English language studies.
By the time he was in the eighth grade, he was so well informed that he even won a competition about astronautics,
as a result of which he travelled to Moscow, where he met, among others, the fourth Soviet astronaut, Pavel Popovich.
Later, as he saw the hopelessness of the socialist system and his interest turned to computers, he travelled to Denmark and then to emigrated to America. However, he did not forget about astronautics: for example, in 1981 he watched the first launch of the American space shuttle at Cape Canaverel with Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, and he even learned to fly in the meantime.
In 2006, he started to prepare for his space flight scheduled for next year in Star City near Moscow. “The training centre was like a university with harsh conditions, but I really enjoyed learning new things,” he said about his time there. Finally, in both 2007 and 2009, he was part of two Soyuz crews to fly to the International Space Station.
After Charles Simony’s talk, the four distinguished guests sat at a table and answered the moderator’s questions. First they recalled the strange questions they had received about space travel: Bertalan Farkas, who flew to space exactly 45 years ago was asked, for instance, whether aliens had knocked on the window of his spacecraft, and Charles Simonyi had to tell if he had seen any meteors up there. From his very recent memories, Tibor Kapu mentioned that radio amateur kids wanted to know if cats could fly into space as pets, and what he would do if he found out that he won the lottery during his space mission.
When asked when he first felt that he really wanted to go to space, Bertalan Farkas recalled that 90 of the 240 Hungarian fighter pilots applied for the position of the first Hungarian astronaut, so at first he did not think he could be the winner. But as more and more dropped out during the selection process, “suddenly there were only 27, then 11, then 7 and then 4. It was then when we travelled to Star City and I first met the astronauts in person and everyone else working on the programme. That was a key moment. Then, after the final selection round,
we returned home and all I said to my wife was ‘I’m the one going to space’.”
Gyula Cserényi stressed that he had had previous choices in his life when he believed he had no chance but later regretted he had not even tried, so this time he did not want to make the same mistake. When he learned about this opportunity, he knew immediately that he would apply, although it was only one day before the deadline when he was able to submit all required documents.
Another question raised at the event was how space travel is different now than several decades ago. According to Tibor Kapu, there are now many more automated processes, so “with a bit of exaggeration we were only passengers.” On the other hand, astronauts stay longer at the International Space Station, which creates a lot of problems to solve. “But the Russian cans are still the same as the ones I saw in Charles’ photos,” he noted.
Gyula Cserényi pointed out that today’s astronauts need to have quite different qualities than in the past, and this is going to be even more so in the future:
“You no longer need the skills of a fighter pilot but you’re expected to be a sort of science Swiss army knife.”
But did the Russians differentiate between the astronauts and the space tourist? Well, yes, and it was especially interesting for Charles Simonyi how you can determine if someone is not perfectly suited to be an astronaut but is good enough to fly as a tourist. “There weren’t any hard criteria, not even in a medical sense, but I had to learn everything as the others,” he explained. By the way, Simonyi is often asked why he flew a second time. “It was more interesting, similarly to watching a good movie for a second time: I knew what to pay attention to and I was able to prepare much better.”
There were, of course, questions about the experiments as well. Bertalan Farkas highlighted the radiation meter called Pille invented by Hungarian engineers, which you could easily use to measure radiation anywhere, and its improved versions are being used even today. “We also conducted biomedical, physical and remote sensing experiments,” he added.
The successor of the Pille
Tibor Kapu is proud of having been able to successfully perform all of his 25 experiments, and he immediately added that it was mostly thanks to those who designed them. Actually, he also worked with Pille, but there is already a new, even smaller Hungarian-developed instrument for radiation metering.
When discussing the importance of the BME, Bertalan Farkas said that the astronauts of the future will mostly need engineering and medical training, and the know-how acquired in the BME’s training programmes will have to play a vital role in that. “I’m glad I was able to study here, and when asked, I tell the children even today that they can benefit a lot from what they get here,” he added.
Tibor Kapu explained that today’s space programmes are operated not by geniuses but by well-oiled, collaborating teams, and besides being the best years of his life, the university taught him many things, including teamwork, which proved decisive during his astronaut training.
“Show me another university in the region that sends satellites into space and whose students develop rockets!”
Gyula Cserényi pointed out that the first word that comes to his mind about the BME is “perseverance”. Those years were not easy but “the knowledge that the BME equipped me with provided the career path as a result of which I can now sit here with these great people. Not everyone needs to be an astronaut, but everyone should have a goal and do something about it, because the things you regret the most are those you have failed to do.”
After the talk, the stars of the evening had one more challenging task ahead: to hand out autographs to members of the audience waiting in long queues. This heightened interest is understandable as a single astronaut’s autograph is quite valuable in itself but four next to each other is truly unique.
