Interviews
Ulf Merbold
Golz … asks Ulf Merbold
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
The well known sports journalist Wolfgang Golz regularly asks prominent football players, trainers, fans and experts about their expectations for the World Cup 2006 in Germany. On this occasion he is talking to the former astronaut Ulf Merbold.
First of all, Mr. Merbold, the standard question in this series of interviews: Why will Germany win the 2006 World Cup?
Ulf Merbold: I think, at the moment, that it’s nothing more than a pious hope. Everybody, including me, is crossing their fingers for the German team in the hope that they will be successful. However, the best team deserves to win and it should be played in a fair and sporting manner.
In the old days boys wanted to be train drivers, these days they would rather be an astronaut like you or a professional footballer. That’s how things fall in place.
I wouldn’t want to swap places with any footballer in the world. At ESA (we are paid the same as normal scientists. If you consider the time and effort it takes to get a degree and a PhD, then we are paid peanuts. But you can’t always measure riches in terms of cash.
The wheel was one of man’s most important inventions. It’s round like a sphere; like a ball. And the ball moves the world like no other piece of sports equipment. It’s round like the earth which you were able to see from an astronaut’s perspective.
Yes, the sphere has an incredibly fascinating geometric shape. The surface curvature is the same all over; it has no top and bottom. In that sense it is perfect as a piece of sports equipment. A ball with corners or spikes is unthinkable. The ball is universal. In old drawings and paintings you can see that people played ballgames thousands of years ago. But spheres can also be used to hurt people. I hate to think how many people have lost their lives because of it.
The 2006 World Cup organisers are aiming for the stars. Indeed the official World Cup poster features a football made up of stars.
It's a great poster. For me the word space represents a challenge. And we have the technical means to get there. The association with the starlit heavens, with the stars that light up our nights has been an inspiration for many. That includes Immanuel Kant who wrote, ''The starry heavens above me...''. A very poetic dimension which has captured many peoples’ imaginations. Where do we come from; where are we going? I rather doubt though, that the way our football is being played at the moment, it deserves to be called galactic.
Winning a big game makes fans and players alike feel the lightness of being. Weightless with joy. What was weightlessness in space like for you?
I am a man who thinks with his head. Weightlessness, a state of free fall, is far from being a safe. That makes it fascinating. You can do fifty somersaults with loop jumps or fly through the spaceship like an arrow, just like superman. Floor and ceiling are meaningless concepts. You experience an emotional high but not like love for example. What sticks longest in your mind is how your perception of the earth changes. When you can orbit the planet in 90 minutes the earth loses its sense of size. You feel how limited a spaceship is in comparison to the spaceship earth and you see how beautiful and fragile our planet is. You have to be in space to actually feel this sensation.
Can you tell me about your most impressive experience of a football stadium?
That was during my last spaceflight eleven years ago. On the day of German unification. By chance we flew over London every day. Later you could see Paris lit up, the Ruhr area and then the eternal city - Rome. I looked out of the MIR spacecraft and saw a very bright spot in an already well lit city. At first, I thought, had God presented the Pope with a divine light? Or had the Lord our Father cast cosmic energy beams onto St. Peter's?
And?
I looked through my binoculars and, 400 kilometres above earth, I could see it was the Olympic stadium in Rome, not far from the Vatican. And a football match was being played.
Was it Lazio or Roma at home?
I couldn’t tell! And sadly I couldn't see the ball either.
Germany is hoping that a good World Cup will give it a psychological boost. Could the German space industry do with that as well?
It would be great if we could build a culture in our country that puts scientists and artists up among the best in society. Of course a country must earn money to support developments, including space travel. If the footballers are successful and win the World Cup, that's fine by me. My 94 year old mother is the football mad member of our family. She remembers exactly how Gerd Müller scored the winning goal in the 1974 World Cup Final.
Spacemen must be in peak fitness. Are they as fit as professional footballers?
Well, in the strictest sense that's not the case. Anybody who wants to travel in space must not have any weaknesses. You have to be fit but not to the level of professional footballers. You need to be able to work as a team member, have the psychological aptitude, no desire for dominance, and a scientific educational background. You need to be in good health but you don't have to have the oxygen intake of a Jan Ullrich. A heart attack can't be prevented by having an IQ of 160, just as a healthy body cannot compensate for a lack of intelligence.
Happiness for footballers is scoring an important goal in a big game in front of 80,000 cheering fans. Astronauts experience their happiness almost on their own. Do you envy footballers?
Not necessarily. Space travel rewards us with weightless orbits of this beautiful planet, with incredibly bright stars on the dark side of the earth in an exceptionally black sky. On top of that, there is the intellectual experience of later facing scientific colleagues and presenting them with the data that meet their expectations. It’s part of my make-up that I want to take part in the evaluation process, and experience how new discoveries push back the boundaries. You don't get 100,000 screaming fans but it wouldn't make things more fascinating if there were.
As Germany's first astronaut you have been celebrated as a hero. Have you enjoyed it?
Yes, I can say that I have enjoyed it, although I don't need to be a hero. More important is what we achieve by such scientific research flights. If that gains recognition that makes me feel good too. The first flight took up five years of my life and wasn't without its dangers. But it did bring me hours of happiness. I was voted man of the year, but I could have done without the hustle and bustle of the TV crews. However, ESA said: “it was good for you and good for us all”. I see it as my duty, as ambassador of space travel, to do question and answer sessions for the people that control the public purse strings.
The 'Golden potato' award must count as part of hero-worship. The Minister at the time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, gave you this award because you hadn't claimed your vast mileage as business trip. That would have been a considerable sum.
Certainly. My first mission alone accounted for seven million kilometres. Altogether it was about 35 million.
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Ulf Merbold
64, married with two children was the first German astronaut. To be precise the first German in space was Sigmund Jaehn from the former GDR. But as he flew with the Soviet Russians he called himself a cosmonaut. Merbold studied physics and worked for ten years in metal research at the Max-Planck-Institute in Stuttgart, before moving on to the space industry. In total he made three space flights. Twelve months ago he retired as an astronaut but maintains a working relationship with the European Space Agency (ESA) on a consultancy basis. His most memorable moment in his football career was a broken rib. Apart from that he considers himself ''ill-suited to team sports. I was impertinent. Sometimes I turned up, sometimes I didn't.'' That is why he prefers to carry on with his flying - in his glider!
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