After Russian President Vladimir Putin shook hands with Brazilian cosmonaut Marcos Pontes, experts said that it was no longer necessary for him to take off.
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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Putin Receives Brazilian Cosmonaut
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Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who seems to have reached his career ceiling, and Marcos Pontes, for whom the sky's the limit. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov was impressed by the meeting.
Sometime Marcos Pontes had been a regular Brazilian. But those days are gone. He was made a lieutenant colonel and now he's going to be a cosmonaut. He creates the impression of a person who has changes for the better ahead of him. I'm sure that he is aware that there has never been anyone like him in Brazil before and never will be again. The dawning of that fact becomes clearer on his face by the minute. Such awareness would probably not sit well on all faces, I am almost sure that it is making Pontes look better.
Yes, it seems that Pontes is almost ready to believe that he means more for the Brazilian people than Pele. When I saw him in the Great Kremlin Palace surrounded by Brazilian and foreign (that is, Russian) journalists, I thought that he may have been in space already and had come to the Kremlin to receive some award. He already has Gagarin's famous smile and it didn't leave his face for the whole half hour while we were there together waiting for the presidents.
Pontes made good use of that half hour. He told about how he had been preparing for his trip into space his whole life. The last six years were the most fruitful, when NASA trained him for a flight in one of its craft.
“But then I decided to transfer to a Russian spacecraft,” Pontes said.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“There was an accident on the American shuttle Columbia,” he sighed. “And they told me at NASA that I would have a long time to wait for my turn now.”
“And in Russia?”
“In Russia, everything was decided instantly,” he beamed. “Here you can make an agreement on anything!”
“And how much does it cost?” I asked.
“I don't know exactly,” he confessed. “About $20 million, it looks like.”
It turned out later that he was right about that.
They asked him what he would take with him on the flight.
“”Oh, I'm going to take off in this hat!” he exclaimed. “Our famous Brazilian pilot Alberto Santos-Dumont wore a hat like this.”
“You'll wear the hat during the flight?”
“Of course! I will fly off into space in this wonderful hat.”
He added that he would be flying in that hat for no less than ten days and that the launch was set for March 2006.
“And then I will be the mo0st famous man in Brazil!” he exclaimed.
“What?” I asked. “Can you be more famous than Pele in Brazil?”
The Brazilian journalists laughed, but Pontes did not.
“No,” he answered sadly.
But I think he's going to try.
Anatoly Perminov, head of the Federal Space Agency, said later that the value of the contract could be close to $20 million. “But the agreement still has to be finalized,” he said with a hint of a grimace.
I asked him the Americans reacted to the fact that a Brazilian astronaut, rejected by them, will fly to the international space station and meet the same American astronauts.
“We had to coordinate everything with them. We are obligated to coordinate such questions with all five of the participants in the project,” Perminov said. “But there were no objections.”
“Were you expecting them?”
“What objections?” he said with a wave of his hand. “Our Soyuz is practically the only thing that goes there [into space]. The third seat is ours.” There are three places on board the Soyuz, one for the commander, one for the engineer and one that has been used for commercial purposes lately. “We'll take who we want.”
So Pontes was lucky enough to be wanted.
Perminov and president of the Brazilian space agency Sergio Gaudenzi signed the “contract on the space flight by the participant in the space flight on the Russian segment of the International Space Station.” Pontes could breath easy. Not that he was worried, I think.
Putin limited his comments to calling the contract important. Lula was not so self-limiting. His main disclosure was that Russia and Brazil have many similar traits.
“They are both countries of continental proportion,” he said. Then he hesitated for a second, thinking about what else may unite the two countries. “Both Russia and Brazil began the process of industrialization late,” he added, “so we face similar challenges. We both have to modernize promptly.” This he said with great enthusiasm. He fell silent again and, sensing that that topic had been exhausted, exclaimed, “My dear President Putin!”
Putin turned to him with equal enthusiasm. He spoke warmly about his visit to Brazil last November and magnanimously chocked up the unprecedented growth in trade between the countries since then to that visit.
“Trade turnover is breaking all records!”
He didn't mention what the previous record had been.
“There are no historical conflicts between Brazil and Russia,” Lula continued. “So we share the task of creating a promising world. If we unite the economic potentials of Russia and Brazil, the technical knowledge of Russia with the technology of Brazil, the performance capacity of the Brazilian people and the Russian people…”
I got the idea. It was a Russian-Brazilian union state. I mentally combined the performance capacities of the Russian and Brazilian peoples. Not very promising.
“We will certainly give the world a new face,” Lula concluded.
That I could believe.
“In that world, there will be work for all,” he continued concluding.
That will be because Russian and Brazilians won't do any work.
“And now I would like to introduce to you our new cosmonaut!”
That's how they introduce boxers who have never been knocked out in their short professional lives.
He called Pontes up from the second row. I expected the Brazilian president to lift Pontes' hand up like the winner of a boxing match. The Gagarin smile lit up on Pontes' face again. Lula turned Pontes in the direction of the TV camera and photographers and smiled with him, if less widely.
“Oh, he hasn't even taken off yet and they are already taking pictures of him,” a Russian whispered to his companion in front of me.
“Putin has already shaken his hand too. He doesn't even need to take off,” his friend replied.
Andrey Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 19, 2005
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