Today I met a cosmonaut. Talgat Musabayev spent two sessions on board Mir, and is now Director of Aerospace Agency of Republic of Kazakhstan. No Borat jokes, please.
The Kazakh delegation were visiting the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and I volunteered to take them around Diamond Light Source. As a 560m third generation synchrotron, housed in a striking silver doughnut, we often get compared to a spaceship, but as far as I am aware we have never been visited by a real spaceman before. Luckily we had a Russian scientist who was able to help show the group round.
I’m really interested in the way different groups of scientists interact and the language barriers that arise between, for example, the physicists who built the Diamond machine and the biologists that use it. But I’m also amused by the way technical terms have a similarity that can break through language barriers – having no grasp of Russian whatsoever, words like synchrotron, cyclotron, and electromagnetic were clearly recognisable. So whilst I could almost understand his question about phase modulation in third generation synchrotrons, I was unable to ask him what it was like to be a proper spaceman.
Perhaps that’s for the best.
Kazakhstan has a space agency? Borat truely misrepresents that country!
Great post! It is funny how scientific terminology is the same (or very similar) in most languages. It makes things quite a bit easier when it comes to international collaborations. Out of curiosity, how long has this facility been open? Is it booked solid? I know the synchrotron in Chicago (really hope I am getting this right) is booked 24 hrs a day, every day.
Diamond came online in January 2007, and we are oversubscribed as well! We’re not in operation 365 days a year, but we are 24 hours when we’re running and we have people in all the time.
Great first post, Sara. Welcome to Nature Network. I’m very jealous you met a cosmonaut – and one of the most experienced ones at that.
Although Kazakhstan may not be the first country that comes to mind when we think of high-tech, the state is home to the Baikonur spaceport, from which Yuri Gagarin and all subsequent Soviet/Russian astronauts launched. Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia has leased the cosmodrome from the Kazakhs, I think.
This is true, Kazakhstan leases Baikonur to Russia. The Kazakhs that visited us are based at Baikonur, so I’m hoping for a return visit :)