Article on superstitions in space

[Belisarius]

Hi all,

Thought you might like to see this article on superstitions and traditions among astronauts/cosmonauts (I wrote it)

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1137/1

 

[nitro159]

I quite enjoyed that! A good read, very well done!

 

[Ghostrider]

Quite interesting - but then sailors and aviators have always been a superstitious lot. Why not space travelers...

 

[Whatu]

Really interesting read, !
I didnt know a thing about this.

Btw I noticed you live in Barcelona, hehe its a great city. :speakcool:

 

[SiberianTiger]

Hi all,

Thought you might like to see this article on superstitions and traditions among astronauts/cosmonauts (I wrote it)

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1137/1

Ha-ha, nice to see a verse of the song in my translation there!

 

[Belisarius]

I didn't know you had done the translation Tiger, I picked it up from Kosmonavtka Suzie.

Whatu - Yeah, I'm Anglo-Irish myself from London, but I've been living in Barcelona for nearly 20 years, and my family is from here. All my other relatives live in the UK or Ireland.

Thanks for your appreciative comments, fellas - glad you liked the piece. I'm trying to work on a second piece for TSR and translate the existing one you read into Spanish for the magazine market here. I'm basically reviving a career in journalism from 20 years ago, when I lived in London. But then I did women's magazines like Elle and Cosmo, and I hated it. Now I'm writing about what I love - space travel and history.

 

[bujin]

It was an interesting article.

It would be interesting to come back in a thousand years and see if the legend surrounding Yuri Gagarin (with all the rituals) has turned him into something of a god-like figure!

 

[Chipstone306]

messsage

Moved previous posts to random comments thread as they were off topic concerning this article


I was suprised to see that the Canadian Space agency dones not have any mention of space superstitions. A lot of these superstitions seem based on sea travel. Great article!!!

 

[Belisarius]

Thanks - I couldn't find anything on Canucks anywhere. Nor Chinese, try as I might. So we will just have to speculate.

 

[Chipstone306]

Maybe we Canucks will have to make some traditions. It seems that the superstitions are only for those nations with a MANNED space flight program. I wonder if there are onther traditions for unmanned rocket launches from other countries? i paticularly like the russians, everything they do with their space program speaks of little fear my favorite scene from the bbc'c space race was to watch yuri and kovelov urinating on the vostok rockets. I wonder what happens to the coins that they place on the rails during the launch?


EDIT I remember somewhere that the russians open a bottle of champagne before the launch and give the cosmonaut half a glass to drink with the understanding that the bottle will be resealed and reopened when they successfully return

 

[Belisarius]

Ugh, flat champagne made in Russia.

BTW I've never found any evidence that they pee on the rockets, rather the crew bus. Maybe the BBC was mythologising a bit? It wouldn't be the first time.

And the coins I left out of the article for reasons of space and relative uninterest. When I was a kid I used to flatten coins on rail tracks too. After about twice you get bored of it.

 

[Scarecrow]

I just had a thought: do astronauts/cosmonauts who've never crossed the equator before get a Line-crossing ceremony on their first orbit? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-crossing_ceremony

 

[Belisarius]

That would be cool. But I guess they don't do it - yet

 

[NukeET]

I just had a thought: do astronauts/cosmonauts who've never crossed the equator before get a Line-crossing ceremony on their first orbit? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-crossing_ceremony

In the US Navy, someone has to be on board who already has "crossed the line" in order to officiate.