Major General Ilan Ramon is a messenger, just as he is an astronaut. This is what the Houston Chronicle newspaper, which has been accompanying him since they arrived in the southern city, writes about Ramon. "His country, hungry for good news and inspiration will accompany him on Thursday on his flight aboard the shuttle Columbia full of hope."
Major General Ilan Ramon is a messenger, just as he is an astronaut. This is what the Houston Chronicle newspaper, which has been accompanying him since they arrived in the southern city, writes about Ramon. "His country, hungry for good news and inspiration will accompany him on Thursday on his flight aboard the shuttle Columbia full of hope."
"I could never characterize myself like Alan Shepard or John Glenn," Ramon said, but, of course, for the people of Israel and the Jewish community, it's a serious matter because I'm the first, and it's a great honor."
Security will be tight due to the crisis in the Middle East and the expected war with Iraq, which attacked Israel with Scud missiles during the 1991 Gulf War. "Instead of fighting each other, we make life easier for all of us, regardless of where they are on the planet," said Ramon.
According to the writer, Mark Chero, for Israel, the terrorist-faith, the flight came at the right time just as the Mercury flights of Shepard and Glenn raised the mood of the USA during the Cold War.
The growing national interest in the flight makes Ramon the spokesman for all the Jews in the world, partly because his mother is an Auschwitz survivor, Chero writes. "The fact that I am the son of a Holocaust survivor has a strong symbolic meaning, I am proof that even though my people have gone through difficult times, we are marching forward.
The Israeli contribution to the wide range of experiments on board Columbia is a camera designed to observe and record the flow of dust from the deserts to the Mediterranean Sea and their effect on the global climate as their particles float over the Atlantic Ocean. Another Israeli experiment will be the examination of the metabolic process and in particular the weakening of the bones due to the lack of gravity, findings that can help in the treatment of osteoporosis.
Ramon became the first astronaut in April 1997 in accordance with the space agreement signed two years earlier. "They came and patted me on the shoulder and asked me if I wanted to be an astronaut" said Ramon. "It appeared out of nowhere. Of course I didn't refuse."
The selection was made according to two criteria: his formal education as an electrical and computer engineer at Tel Aviv University, as well as his background as a test pilot in the Air Force, as a fighter pilot in the Yom Kippur War, and even flying F-16s.
"He's almost certainly one of the most highly trained mission specialists to ever fly," said the ship's commander, Rick Husband. "He will participate in many experiments like the rest of us, so at least for me he is a task expert only by definition, but in practice his powers are much greater," he said.
