The New Space Age LIVE from Prague! | Tilly Talks Tech

Okay, who wants to go to space!? We could be seeing commercial flights way up there sooner than you think... 👀 🚀🌌 

Aleš Svoboda, a supersonic fighter pilot and ESA Astronaut Reserve, shares his journey from dreaming of 'Top Gun' to training for a mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Aleš reveals the grueling realities of astronaut selection (chosen from 22,000 applicants!) and the rigorous training required to prepare for zero gravity and how astronauts with physical disabilities (Parastronauts) are proving that space is truly for everyone.

This took place LIVE at Prague for the 5th edition of Future Port Youth, which I hosted!

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(https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Astronauts/Ales_Svoboda
https://www.esa.int/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There are some jobs in this world that feel almost too extraordinary to even dream about. One of those being getting to train as an astronaut in the hopes that one day you'll make it to space. In today's episode, I sit down on stage with fighter jet pilot and astronaut trainee Alej Swoboda as he shares his journey from dreaming of Top Gun to training for a mission to the International Space Station. Ever wondered what it takes to get to space? Well, you've come to the right place. Hey everyone, my name is Tilly. Welcome or welcome back to Tilly Talks Tech. This episode took place at the Nova Sparella live from Prague. Like my QA episode I did a couple of episodes ago, which you guys really liked. This talk took place at the same event where I got to interview an astronaut trainee and fighter jet pilot. What? Despite him always being up in the air and planning to go to space, he's a very down-to-earth guy, and he told me all the ins and outs of what it was like training to be an astronaut and being selected to go up to space on the European space mission. Out of 22,000 people, he was selected. And it has not been a short journey by any means. Without any further ado, I'm gonna play you the interview, which takes place on a nice spinning square stage. If you're watching the visual version, if you're listening, you're gonna have to come to YouTube and check it out. Take it away, Tilly. Hello everybody, and welcome back. We're at FuturePot Youth, and it is time for our second segment. Based on the drum roll we did earlier, I think a lot of people are looking forward to this bit. We're talking all about space, the new space age, and how that's gonna affect us in the future. And we've got some ethnic speakers coming up. We've got one guy who's been to space already, so he can tell us all about that. And we have another guy who's training for an upcoming mission, an astronaut trainee. How cool is that! So, our next guest embodies what it means to turn ambition into trajectory, from flying supersonic jets to now training to be an astronaut himself. He represents not only personal determination, but also the Czech Republic's leap into a new era of space exploration. Please welcome fighter pilot and astronaut trainee and legislative borderland. Welcome, welcome, Alan. And you've got the vulcane.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

I love to see this. I'm representing the Czech Republic.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Homing, humangously big flag for whatever reason, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Nice fit.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Why not?

SPEAKER_01 2:28

It's pretty.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

They're actually pretty big leaders when it comes to space and space exploration, which I have no idea, but it is really, really cool. And you're a person who is obviously training to be an astronaut now, which is awesome. And just quickly, raise your hand in the room if you, as a kid, you know, I think it's the standards like what you want to be when you grow up. How many people wanted to be an astronaut? How many people wanted to go to space? Yeah? Right? It's gotta be the coolest thing ever.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yeah, like how many people.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

And is that something you always wanted to do? Did you want to be an astronaut when you were younger?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah, I've always wanted to do something cool. So when I was a yeah, when I was a young kid, like three, four, five years old, I uh I wanted to be uh a fighter pilot.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

And uh, you know, later later on when uh when we got those fancy movies and TV like Top Gun or Iron Eagle, that uh kind of cemented my my ambition. And uh I'd stick around until basically graduation from high school. So uh when I graduated from high school, I already decided to uh to go to the University of Defense, which is uh basically our Air Force Academy where you study for for being a future pilot, either fighter pilot or helicopter pilot, transport pilot. So uh that was my ambition, my big goal, and uh the astronaut thing was uh like something as a bonus, something extra coming after it potentially. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Up and up, like the way you wanted to do something cool. You're definitely, definitely doing that. And talk to me about being a fighter jet pilot. How did that come about? And obviously, I imagine there was quite strenuous training to get there. So talk us through that process. I know we just saw in the expo people were like flying jets in like a simulator. Did you have to do any of that? How close to that is the real thing?

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yeah, we we fly sims all the time. I mean, right now it's uh it's about 10 to 50, 10 to 20 percent of the other training is synthetic based. We're moving towards 50-50 split. So in the in the in the coming years, when with the new fighter jets coming, we will do the majority actually of our training on the SIMs for various reasons. Because when you're flying on a sim, you don't need to stick to those uh rigid safety rules. Sure. Because the number one priority when doing flight training is not to kill ourselves, right? Not to not to uh hit each other in the air. And and the sim, there are it's the the the rules are less stringent, and you can also, the other reason is for is for classification purposes, because when you're flying out there in the real world, everyone can see you, everyone, everyone can uh see your tactics and everything. Yeah, but on the sim, it's an encapsulated environment. So you can try and full-up tactics, yeah, and it's actually uh more cost cost effective because you can you you can crank out like multiple stories within a day for close to zero cost. So why not?

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah, why not? Why not? Seriously. And did you check out the sim in the expo? Have you been to the expo yet?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah, I've been down there, but it was a bit crowded, but yeah, and almost no air. Sure, yeah, no, it gets pretty hot on the similar to space as we just uh discussed, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

So yeah, but I feel like you should, I feel like people would part the crowd for you know the astronaut trainee and you can show us how it's done in a fighter jet pilot. But what do you think was like most surprising for you in training?

SPEAKER_01 5:52

For as in astronaut training and training for an astronaut, well, I I would say uh one of the typical aspects of astronaut training is that you need to become uh very uh general in everything. You know you have to be the the jack of all trades, master of none. So you you have to know a little bit of everything, a little bit, a little bit of orbital mechanics, little little bit of anatomy, a little bit of uh diving, a little bit of uh, I don't know, uh geophysics, meteorology. You you're not necessarily becoming an expert in any of those fields, but you need to know everything and have a basic understanding and attain basic skills. So the the whole astronaut training is split into two big parts. The first one is called basic training, where everyone arrives from different backgrounds and you you learn uh those very general basic skills which are which are universal for any orbital mission. And then later on, when when you're assigned to a specific mission, you do what's called mission-specific training, and it's very tailored towards and it's customized towards a specific mission. So you so you you take what you have learned during the basic training and you customize it and you and you make it more specific towards the the launch vehicle, the spacecraft, the the orbital station, and the specific project and experiments you're gonna be working on. So that's that's it.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

There's a lot that goes into it there.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

For us, it's uh it's uh it's a six-month uh training program, which is split into three separate parts or consequent parts. So I've completed the first two parts, so uh the the third uh third is uh still uh still to go next year, next spring. We can actually see some visuals from uh from the recent training. That's this is the zero G plane. That's uh there's actually the only one in uh in Europe. There's one in the US, there's one in Europe. And uh it's it's a very cool thing. You can uh you can uh use it for various things, but the primary reason why we have a zero G plane is to train astronauts. So uh so we we go there, it's an empty plane, and there's there's nothing in it. It's it's just empty fuselage, and empty, empty thing. And we take off uh six, seven, eight guys, plus some instructors, plus some safety people. We fly over the sea to a dedicated area, and then we fly there for about two hours and do this parabolas where we have uh zero G for about 20, 25 seconds. So we we do like 30 of them, and we go from very simple things to more advanced stuff. And that's that's uh for us to get used to the zero G environment, to the microgravity, and how to how to work uh with with our own body, how to rotate, how to translate, how to combine all these things together, and how to use uh very simple tools, because even very uh simple things when they're they are done in zero gravity can become very difficult.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Yeah, I was gonna say, like, how was that the first time you did it? Because I mean you're a pro now, I assume, right? Like you're literally preparing to go. Semi-pro.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

I'm still learning.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Yeah, semi-pro. He's very humble. Um, but yeah, like how was that the first time? Because I reckon if I did that, I'd be ready to throw up. Was it like that? How was the adjustment?

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yeah, it was very cool actually. We we all adjusted um, I would say quite quite uh quite quick and easily. And uh well that there's a there's a learning curve. It's it's not just about you know getting used to the feeling, because you uh getting used to the feeling is is one thing, but being being productive and efficient and you know not not uh having to worry about if if I bump into something or you know what what do I need to do from if I want to move from point A to point B, it's it's another thing. Because you can see it uh, for example, in the last uh short duration mission on ISS, which is the Axiom 4, on which my my classmate from ISA, uh my Polish friend Slawosznanski flew, and he received exactly the same training, multiple zero G flights, and some of his uh some of his crewmates did not. And you could see the difference, you know, when they entered when they docked to ISS, when they entered the the modules and flew in. You could and and during their couple first couple days working on ISS when they are really busy doing all the scientific and technological experiments, you could see the difference. So the training is there for a reason, and we are very glad to have the cutting-edge training that's the best training that we can get here in Europe.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Yeah, the training is vital. I mean, if you go into space, you want to be prepared.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Oh yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:14

I mean, pretty hard to get help up there, isn't it? You want to know what you're doing for sure. And to a lot of people, the idea of like astronauts and that job in general is like extraordinary. It feels like a superhero-esque job. Like, what do you mean you're going up there? And I'm interested to know what was the biggest hardship for you. Was that the training, or was it kind of adjusting mentally to how you were gonna be up there? Obviously, you're so far away from everybody as well. What do you think is your biggest hardship? Maybe you're still going through it because you're so prepared.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Yeah, you bet. I mean, I think the biggest hardship was after the selection.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Because you know, before the selection, you you're you're working on a different career. You can't become an astronaut right after high school or right after college, right? So you you need to have a pretty successful career already, even before you before you you apply. Then you apply and there's there's a whole process. So for us in Europe, it's not like in the US where you have astronaut selection every few years. In Europe, it's like every 10 or 15 years. So you have like one shot usually in your life. And uh it it's it's it's a whole process. It took like 18 months, different stages. But the most difficult part was was after it, because you know, during the selection, you just arrive at a at a phase of uh of the selection, you you're prepared, you you you prepare yourself as much as you as you could, you do your best and then see what happens, right? Yeah, and if you if you if you're good enough, you're lucky enough, you you're invited to the next stage, and the next stage, and then all of a sudden it's uh it's you and your 16 friends selected out of 22,000 people, and you're there, and that's it. But you know, well, then you're then then there's the announcement of the new class of astronauts, and then what, right? Like what's the what's the plan? What's the plan now? Well, there's no plan. So so it's uh uh for for everyone because you know it's uh it's very it's uh it's it's it's it's very difficult in the in the the human spaceflight business to uh think ahead uh with in in in specific terms uh for like five, ten, fifteen years. So there's no guarantee you will ever fly. There's there's no plan for everyone. The opportunities uh need to come up or uh need to be uh helped to come up. So uh that's probably the most difficult part.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah, because you're going through all this work training to get there, but then the last bit is like hope that you you finally get to put these skills to the test, otherwise you're just a trained astronaut and you're just like on the ground. What's that about? So talk to us about this Czech mission that you're going on. You're gonna be going up in space. Talk us through what that mission is, when you're gonna be up there, when we can start waving at the moon and knowing that Alex is up there.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Yeah, well, that's the plan. Uh basically in the first half of this year, our government uh made a decision to go ahead with a national project. Uh it's uh it's called the Czech Space Journey. And it's not just about the the mission to the ISS. Uh, well, the it's the national mission to the ISS is the center point and the biggest part of the of the project. But there are many activities related to that, and our goal is uh is to uh inspire younger generation, inspire kids, uh involve uh students, pupils, uh, uh young people and teachers and the mission and in all the activities. One of the examples of doing that was uh the the mission zero G, as we call it, which was using exactly this this this plan, the Zero G plan that we use to train ourselves. Yeah, we brought it to Prague, to the Czech Republic, and we ran some sort of competition which mimicked the astronaut selection process. And we uh we selected 26 uh students and kids who became part of the the Zero G crew and had to had the opportunity to experience exactly the same as we experienced during the astronaut training. So that's one just one example of those activities. And another goal we have, and it's probably the major goal or the primary goal, is to provide an opportunity for uh top Czech science and for top Czech technology to go to the ISS. Because if there was no national mission, no Czech mission to the ISS, and this is not just about Czech Republic, this is it's it's true for every uh smaller or medium-sized country in Europe, there would be no opportunity for uh Czech science, Czech research, and Czech technology to actually go to the ISS and take the next giant leap. So that's that's our goal. And with uh this in mind, we just recently just announced 13 top uh Czech scientific and technological projects that will fly on board the Czech national mission to the ASS in 2027, which is our goal. We want to fly on what is called PM6. It's uh it's a mission that's uh that's scheduled for uh the the end of 2027. Right now, the the ball is figuratively speaking on the European Space Agency side, who is uh negotiating on our behalf with NASA and with the US companies who will uh who will uh provide that uh that spaceflight. So it's uh we're tracking. Uh there's still a lot that needs to needs to be done, mostly on the legal and contractual side, but we're still tracking and we're still good to go.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

Okay, that's epic. And looking ahead, what do you think will be the next big milestone for like human spaceflight, say in the next like 10 to 15 years?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Well, uh I think in an even shorter time frame, like five to ten years, the next big thing will be commercialization of LEO, of the low Earth orbit. So we can see it already. You know, in in the past, the launches, you know, the the transportation of human crew to orbit and bringing them safely back was a business done by those big space agencies like NASA, Federal Space Agency or ESA, European Space Agency. But that shifted towards uh commercial companies. So you can you can see that right now people flying on US vehicles are flying with SpaceX. You know, they they're flying uh on a US commercial launch vehicle and on a US uh commercial spacecraft. There's a similar initiative here in Europe to develop our own uh our own reusable cargo resupply spacecraft and potentially human spacecraft. So the same three the same shift from operating uh space shuttles by agencies and moving that towards uh the commercial sector, that the same shift is going to happen with orbital stations. So right now you have the ISS, the International Space Station, which is operated by 15 countries by governmental or introgovernmental agencies, but there's going to change very soon. Uh there's going to be at least two or three commercial space stations in low Earth orbit in the coming years, and they will be provided as an infrastructure, as a service for those uh big agencies and for countries. So you if you're if you're uh if you if if you're uh uh a guy or girl in a in a country in Europe in your country or your company or whoever or your organization wants to do some research in space in the coming years, you do not do it with uh you know uh in cooperation with those big uh homongous uh uh let's say public organizations, agencies. You can you can you can uh get everything on the free market, and that's that's amazing because uh whenever you you expose stuff to the free market, then you you offload the risk, you offload the cost, and you also introduce competition. So it further uh further brings the cost down.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yeah, that's really interesting. And theoretically, just a show of hands. If we could just take a day trip to the space, to the space, to space, to the moon, who wants to do that? Raise your hand. Who would be scared? Raise your hand if you'd be scared. Raise your hand if you'd be slow down. Cool. We'll all jump on Alishes, can't we? Shall we? We just jump on your rocket and come up there with you. That would be that would be super cool. And like we said, you're gonna be getting off into space. And I was asking you before, like, are you excited about that? Because I feel like when you've had this vision and gone through so much of this training, and like you said, you've got past this final selection process where you are in fact going up there. I don't know about you, but I'd be so, so excited, right? Are you excited, or is that kind of like you've been doing this so long now that get let's get it over with? How is your mindset going towards this final stretch before you? You know what?

SPEAKER_01 18:30

You need to manage your expectations because it's a long journey and a lot of things need to happen. A lot of those things which uh had needed to happen had already happened, but there's still so much, uh, so much needs to be done. So you need to manage your expectations. It's a very complicated process technically and the organizational and manage management side of things, and financially and so on. So there's a lot of things that can go wrong even before the the mission is uh is a thing, but we're we're on a good trajectory, and uh we all hope that it's uh it's all gonna go well, and that we will we will exploit this great opportunity which we have for our industry, for uh for our kids in the schools, and uh for our country and for our research in science and technology. So we all hope we that uh we will stay in this uh this amazing trajectory we we're on, and that's uh that's uh what keeps us motivated and it's what's what keeps the excitement.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Heck yeah, and we've got that poll on the on the screen right now. Would you go to space if invited tomorrow? How does that make you feel seeing that? How much of the youth wanna go? Because guys, I'd be a bit scared, but you guys seem keen. How does that make you feel seeing that? How many people wanna wanna go to the street? Yeah. So, on that note, if a young person in the audience today dreams of being part of a moon or Mars mission, what would you tell them to start doing tomorrow to prepare for that?

SPEAKER_01 19:47

To start, well, I think regardless of what dream you have, I I think we are lucky enough to be living in a world where anything is possible for for for uh for everyone. Let me let me give you an example. One of one of my friends and what one of my classmates in the uh is an astronaut uh team is uh is uh uh John McFall from United United Kingdom. Yes. And he's an amazing guy, but uh unfortunately when he was I think 19 or something like that, he had an he had an accident on a bike and uh he lost uh uh his leg below the knee. So he's been living with a physical disability since then. But he's been he's been able to achieve amazing things. He's become a surgeon, a very successful surgeon, he's uh become an Olympic medalist, and then on top of that, he became part of our astronaut class. And he's completed a pilot study called the FLY, uh Fly Exclamation Mark Project, which which uh main goal was to prove that uh people with certain physical disabilities can function as uh as uh fully capable and professional astronauts on an orbital mission. So uh that's uh that feasibility study is already completed, and he played a major role in that. And uh I'm I I hope that he will get his uh his space flight assignment soon, and he will prove that uh he is uh he's such a great great guy as he has been so far.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Which is amazing. I have researched all about him, and yeah, that is incredible. I think the moral of the story here is that anybody can do it, there's no limitations anymore. It's a long process, but there's no like, okay, you can't do it because you're this way, you know, and you're gonna be up there relatively soon, which is amazing. Give it up for Alej, everybody, and we can't wait to see you up there.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Okay, thank you.