Orna Nirenfeld. Published in Haifa time, 6/2/2003
Avi Blizovsky "He planned to help Israeli factories that would request a number to carry out experiments in space." Blizovsky about the days together at NASA with Ilan Ramon.
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/columbia127.html
"We didn't imagine that Ilan Ramon was so tense. But before the meeting we thought of how to surprise him, and we brought him a recording from Ezer Weizman. When Weizman talked about having to urinate in a tube. Ilan reacted with a loud laugh." This is how Avi Blizovsky describes the ice-breaking moment between him and Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who was killed in the Columbia shuttle disaster.
About six months ago, the original date for the launch of the space shuttle, Blizovsky set out to shoot a film for the second channel about Ramon and his six friends on the shuttle. The film was broadcast on the day of take-off, and this week, after the disaster, it was shown once more. This week, a few days after the shuttle crash, Blizovsky excitedly recalls the exciting days of the trip to NASA and meeting Ramon, and is debating how to deal with the segments that were filmed and not yet broadcast - segments that were supposed to serve as a surprise for Ramon after the landing.
Ten percent space Since the age of ten, Lizovsky, born in Haifa, has been interested in space faucets. During his studies at the Technion, he had a popular science section in the local "Kol Haifa", which has since closed. About ten years ago, he started writing for the newspaper "Haaretz" about computers, but even here he did not give up his first love - space. "No one wanted to hire a full-time reporter just for space issues," he says. "So what I did as part of the job description 'science reporter' was to write 90 percent of the articles on high-tech topics, and I always made sure to leave ten percent for articles on topics such as science, robotics, and of course space. In my last articles, in 99, I wrote an eight-part series in the full 30 years since man landed on the moon."
Today, Blizovsky operates the "Hidan" space site, the only space site in Israel due to his involvement in the subject, he is recognized by all official bodies, bodies such as the Israel Space Agency, Tel Aviv University, the Weizmann Institute, the Hebrew University, the Technion, the Aerospace Industry, Raphael and other bodies "In fact," he declares, "the entire aviation and defense industry, high-tech companies and startups."
How did the idea develop from just your interest in space to producing a film about Ilan Ramon?
"Like any scientific subject in which I am interested, I followed it, and every time something happened I wrote on my website. Since the end of the 90s, I have been following the first Israeli astronaut. Professionals in the field approached me and said to me, 'As someone who writes so much on the subject, why Do you leave all the knowledge only on your website? Maybe make a movie?'"
So what did you really do?
"I thought about it. I contacted the Israel Space Agency, asked what they were doing, how to advance the issue and go through the whole long bureaucratic process, and I got into the story. It was a very long process. The heavy bureaucracy was mostly in NASA. With persistence and determination I finally got the permits on Tuesday, when on Saturday I was supposed to fly to the United States to shoot the film. I started looking for a producer at the last minute and here too I ran into a lot of problems. I was not so successful in getting the environment excited about a scientific topic, which is considered a topic for nerds, and nerds are not ratings. It was very difficult to sell the idea."
How did the film get released?
"To be honest, I had an alternative plan in case I didn't get a producer who would be excited about the idea. I contacted one of the stations of the 'Fox' network in Houston, USA, and to my surprise they agreed to make a crew available to me for two days of filming in Hai Nam. I was already thinking of financing the film with my own money, and when I return I thought of selling the finished product in Israel."
Regards Lazer and Rauma "Two days before leaving for the US, things settled down," says Blizovsky. "I reached out to Udi Zemberg, one of the heads of the 'Made in Haaretz' production company, and the Keshet company - one of the franchises of the second channel - bought the film, with me as the scientific advisor and an accompanist of the project."
How was the meeting with the heroes of the ferry?
"On June 27, we flew, when the launch was supposed to take place on July 19. The first takeoff was postponed, as well as the others, due to malfunctions that were discovered one after the other. A NASA spokeswoman arranged a personal meeting with Ilan for us, even though he initially expressed opposition. He's probably tired of the intrusion into his personal life."
And which person did you meet?
"He was very tense, very nervous about wanting to meet his family members. He really wanted to keep his privacy and theirs. I think that after all the delays in launching the shuttle, he changed his mind because he thought the film might be used as a souvenir."
In the interview, says Belizovski, the enormous tension in Col. Ramon was evident. "He only answered the questions we asked. Underneath all the niceness and smiling was a very tense person. Before the trip we thought of an idea to relieve the tension. Rather, we didn't know he was so tense, we just wanted to surprise him. We brought him a recording from Ezer Weizman, who turned to him and told him that he envied him, that this is every pilot's dream. He compares his flight into space to the flight of every new pilot at that time, which seemed complicated and scary. Jokingly, of course, he talked about having to urinate in a tube. To this he responded with a loud laugh. Every time he got to Ezer's bites, he burst out laughing. He is very happy for the gesture, and it is a fact that he kept in touch during the flight with Rauma Weizmann via the Internet."
According to the interview you conducted with him, what did he most want to do?
"He was already planning his return to Israel. He was tired of the globetrotting in the USA, and wanted very much to return to Israel, to the Air Force. He said that after his return from space he was expected to have a difficult month and a half of continued work. The experiments that began before the flight continue during it and end after the return."
Did he say anything about the right he was given to represent Israel?
"He is very happy for the privilege that was given to him. In most of his modesty, he made sure to emphasize that he did not win it by his own merits, but he was lucky enough to be the right person in the right place and at the right time. For him, it was a great privilege to represent Israel."
How did he treat the Israeli investment in space exploration?
"He said that investments in the field of space are rising steeply, and that it is important to invest in the issue. He promised to help Israeli companies upload experiments to the International Space Station, and said that he would help any enterprise that researches or is interested in the field."
He treated space tourism as a practical thing?
"I asked him about it. He said he has no doubt that it will happen. Although not tomorrow morning or in a year or two, and maybe not in ten years, but it will come. He estimated that, just as we are now celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first flight of airplanes and flying to every A place without batting an eyelid, in a few decades many will be able to go to space. "My children may already be able to purchase a plane ticket and go to space as tourists," he said.
The experiments were also lost, similar to the multitude of interviewees in the various media during the past week, those who met the late Col. Ilan Ramon and were asked to tell about the man, Blizovsky was also impressed by his modesty and kindness. When he was asked in front of the camera who would greet him upon landing, Ramon replied with the modesty we have learned since the disaster happened: "The family. With them I am ready to go through fire and water." This was the most personal sentence that Ramon gave to Blizovsky during the entire work on the production of the film.
Dozens of hours of television programs and interviews in the various media, as well as conversations and analyzes with the great scientists, were broadcast all over the world, and in Israel as well. Those interviews will probably continue to accompany us in the coming weeks, while trying to explain to those of us who do not understand or are interested in space what could have been the reasons for this terrible explosion, which caused the loss of seven people's lives.
Although Blizovsky is not an official expert of the Israel Space Research Agency, the knowledge and involvement he acquired over the decades made him a sort of "national explainer" in the field. Since the "Columbia" ferry crashed, thousands of visits have been registered to his website. This week he tried to explain, admittedly on the edge of a fork, the sequence of events and the possible reasons that caused this fatal malfunction.
"The explosion didn't happen in space," Blizovsky explains. "It happened when they had already entered the atmosphere. The wing that cracked and then, apparently, broke, caused the penetration of enormous heat into the shuttle. However, due to the features inside the shuttle and the maximum isolation conditions in which the astronauts stay, the heat does not spread throughout the spacecraft. It is a fact that even pieces of cloth survived and The pieces of the body that survived did not burn, as not everything was burned as a result From the friction. The shuttle was built in such a way that the crew was in a blocked place, but not for such a high temperature of the entry from the space and the friction created the heat.
"The shuttle reaches 28 km/h and circles the Earth every hour and a half. She needs to slow down as she prepares to land. When she reaches the runway her speed should be 300 km/h and she stops with a parachute.
"All the experiments that were carried out were inside the shuttle, with the exception of one Israeli experiment, of the ground conditions in space, which was filmed on a computer and a part of it, apparently not a large one, was able to be broadcast during the flight to Israel."
If it is possible to transmit the results of the experiments back to Earth, why did they keep them and wait for the landing?
"Probably trying to save the media, I'm not sure. The details that were lost in the crash were much more important for the research than those that were broadcast and sent to Israel. The experiment of Ort Motzkin's students, for example, was constantly filmed, tracked and transmitted to the ground. It was an automated experiment that was broadcast and transmitted directly over the Internet, So that they could draw conclusions from it. Obviously, receiving the crystals and working on them in the laboratory could have been much more scientifically effective."
"You are a great man"
At the age of ten, spending most of his time buying and reading books on the corner of Halutz and Shapira Bahadar streets, Blizovsky discovered his love for space exploration. Although as part of his studies at the Technion he was trained in economics and management, he did not neglect his first love and continued to collect materials on space. "I really liked popular science books," he recalled this week, and tells how everything surrounding the stories of the first landing on the moon occupied him and his imagination as a child. "In the late 60s and early 70s, there were a lot of books on the subject. It was a flourishing field, and I slowly got into it. The first thing I published in the Haifa locale was a science fiction story, and then I wrote for the culture section about popular science. I was always interested in the subject."
Although the purpose of Blizovsky's trip to NASA was to produce a film about Ramon, he too, as an expert and interested in space exploration, was able to fulfill a dream and touch the real stars. In addition to the personal interview with Ramon, Blizovsky met each of the six astronauts in person and interviewed them for the film he made. All are described on Yado as nice and down-to-earth people. He also planned a surprise for Ilan, "which, unfortunately, we didn't manage to do," he says sadly
what did you plan
"At the end of the conversation with each of them, I asked each of them to tell Ilan a sentence in Hebrew, based on their familiarity with him. A representative sentence, which of course was said by them in English, and I translated it and told them how to say it in Hebrew. The plan was to present and play it to Ilan when they returned from space. I have the recording And it's just chilling to hear and think that it only remains as a memory."
What did they choose to say?
"Mission Commander Rick Husband told him, 'Ilan, we did it.' Chavala Kalpana said, 'Ilan, you're a space sick person.' Astronaut Dave Brown said, 'Ilan, you're a great man.' And astronaut Michael Anderson said, 'Ilan, all Respect to you'".
Columbia disaster - latest updates
The book "The Crash" by Avi Blizovsky and Yefa Shir-Raz deals with the Columbia crash
Introduction to the report of the commission of inquiry into the Columbia disaster
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~626606322~~~109&SiteName=hayadan
