Fleen Senior French Correspondent Pierre Lebeaupin has been out committing acts of journalism¹, this time from the Saint-Malo Comics Festival. He shares with us his report from Day One below.

Friday, day one of Quai des Bulles, the Saint-Malo comics festival, was not a professional day: everyone could come, though of course that included a lot of children (it was a school holiday) since not everyone can afford to take a day off work. While the day started slowly (not much was scheduled in the morning), it had very interesting programming:

• One hour with Marion Montaigne, an interview by Arnaud Wassmer, on the topic of her latest project In The Space Suit of Thomas Pesquet, which is entirely transcribed below.
• An interesting panel on the latest developments of knowledge/world discovery comics. In fact one of the panelists, Anne-Lise Combeaud, the author of Philocomix, told she came from the blogs BD world, and that influenced how she created the comic (trying to experiment within the constraints of the page in particular), and we were able to discuss that experience in the signing that followed at the publisher’s booth (Rue de Sèvres).

One Hour With Marion Montaigne
After introducing Montaigne, Thomas Pesquet, and the project, it took the form of an interview:

Who came up with the idea?
Around September 2015 Montaigne was busy on the Prof Moustache animated project as well as with its latest collection, and wanted to escape this character a bit; and at the same time she wanted to deal more with space matters and for this purpose started meeting with people working for CNES (France space agency), such as the teams who have instruments on the Mars Curiosity rover … or the people in charge of answering UFO sighting mails.

And in particular, astronaut coaches. And it turns out the training to become an astronaut is quite hard. Then Pesquet came up in the conversation, and it turned out he had commented once on one of her notes to confirm that it reflected his experience. Let’s invite him! After a first missed connection, he was able to come to her studio, about one year before he was to take off, which means he was already intensely preparing for it.

The book itself: how can the whole experience be rendered on paper?
Montaigne got to travel and watch the training in Cologne (where the ESA, European Space Agency, training center is located), she had to go to Russia as well, etc. And then have it be proofread. Her aim is to give back to the public what she was told or able to witness: the astronauts through their experience.

Was it a pedagogical intent from Pesquet as well?
He has, by contract, to explain what he does. And while it is not obvious to shoot (staging for film is hardly compatible with the training realities, e.g. when in a centrifuge), and even documentaries have a tendency not to show some unglamorous realities, such as showing classroom time or Russian revision time, comics have no such limitations: they can more easily show more down to Earth aspects that are an important part of daily life.

Is it a childhood obsession?
It is clear this is a job for which you have to have incredible motivation. And And this preparation takes up their whole life, even for those who end up being rejected in the end, which represents most candidates. Not to mention space life represents but about 1% of the total time on the job.

Are the test designers as sadistic as seen in the book?
Both Montaigne and Pesquet came up with this representation; but it has to be said the tests themselves are weird: the version shown in the book is in fact when it is still easy! And the psychological tests are designed not have any discernible logic so as to be unsettling.

One collective test, not shown in the book, involved candidates from multiple nations trying to solve a math problem: a boat in low tide has to rely on a ferry to load cargo, but at the same time the tide rises so conditions change, then there is the matter of the trains that take up the cargo … the result is that after 20 minutes they had not made any progress, and the aim was not to see who could take the lead, because that is not necessarily the kind of player they want in the teams.

So, they are not looking for astronauts with a devil-may-care attitude and an oversized ego …
Don’t get her wrong, Pesquet is on the level. But it is true the prototype of the 60s astronaut (usually the best Air Force test pilots) who left for one or two days by themselves is no longer what they are looking for. Here they have to live in reduced space with five other people for six months: they can’t very well go out for a walk. So they are looking for people who are confident in themselves but easy going with others, and with conflict resolution skills. For instance, they practice with serious video games which have simultaneous competitive and cooperative aspects.

How to represent tests?
One of the issues is showing the time scale of the tests: they take place over months, even years, there are cutoff stages, and they do not necessarily know which tests they will be training for next.

How about the way they learn Russian?
They go in space in a Russian rocket, so they have no choice but to learn the language in the course of a year. They do so in an old mining town about one hour away from Cologne, and they, about 35-40 years old, end up in the same classroom as the local students.

Is the vision of NASA as space’s Hogwarts really Pesquet’s vision?
Everyone has a vision of NASA as that mythical institution, which to be honest they maintain themselves with museums for instance. While there, she was able to see space suit testing rooms, as well as the gigantic pools where astronauts train on different modules for space work.

Which makes sense, because everything has to be relearned in space.
Including the most insignificant, such as the fact they have to wear diapers, and since their bodies will be put to the test in space, they have to be put to the test on the ground and sometimes it is their bodies that fail them.

While NASA feels like Top Gun, for the Space City in Russia the imagery is rather that of Gagarin.
Indeed, in there Gagarin is Serious Business. Russians are in general very superstitious and so have a number of rituals, from the watching of an old, boring documentary The White Dawn, up to urinating one last time at the side of the road just where Gagarin is said to have done so just before leaving for space.

Pesquet first participated in missions where he was a backup.
Indeed, the others from his class where chosen as main participants before him, up until 2014 where he was selected as main for a future mission that ended up taking off in 2016.

And so he joined the club of those who cannot wait but take off again.
Well, maybe not right the day after he landed, but indeed there is something of an elite sportsman in them, in that they see these as challenges to do again or even do once better.

Let’s talk about the centrifuge.
It is used to prepare for takeoff and landing, which are the two most dangerous phases, and so the most anguishing ones, they have to manage the buttons while being subjected to enormous accelerations (up to ten times normal gravity), or sometimes just a joystick when they can’t lift their arm any more; sometimes they use a stick.

He told the story of an astronaut he personally knew: following a bad separation her capsule had a slightly incorrect reentry angle, resulting in them taking 10G of acceleration and a landing rough enough that their capsule burned a field in deep Kazakhstan … so they have to be prepared for the worst.

So the artist has to show the reality behind the communication.
More generally render their personal experience: spinning seat, centrifuge, etc. That they take as a sports challenge.

And there is the matter of learning how to move in in microgravity.
Movies tend to show a misleading image of that: you can go quite fast in microgravity! So they have to deliberately pace themselves. Nevertheless they go through a learning phase when they hit walls, etc.

And how is it to represent that for the artist?
It’s interesting, you have a number of interesting situations, such as the collective meal where they are all eating at the table, and some are around, and some are shown below and above it.

And what about the contents of mission itself?
Many photos, but it is only a slight portion of their work: they work a lot, but during the weekend they play and don’t have a lot to do. So he ends up sending his photos with the captions over the weekend and they are published all through the week by the public communication teams while he is in fact working. It’s about the only interesting thing they can do …

The mission itself ends up not taking a lot of space in the book.
First of course Montaigne couldn’t take up very much of his time while he was there (and of course no way to go there for a documentation trip), and besides the work is quite routine and ends up compressing well.

Did his photos help for documentation?
Indeed, and in fact he is not the only one who takes them; he has to work sometimes.

So explain how the artist tried here to render one of his vehicular exits.
The aim was to try and render the experience of a vehicular exit with in particular the immense scale of the station. Not directly represented is the fact it turns out spending time (about seven hours) in the space suits is far from ideal: the decreased pressure means they end up releasing gas, they sweat a lot, etc. And of course his fellow astronauts omitted to tell him about it beforehand …

And here we see them back on Earth
When they are back on Earth they are really white, he was not that badly out of shape but they do take some punishment in the landing phase, which they compare to a car crash (flips, etc.); once on land they compare their state to a hangover to the tenth power … and meanwhile all the cameras are on them.

Did he recognize himself and his experience in the book, in the end?
He does have a sense of humor, or he would not have accepted in the first place … he meant for these kind of issues (important or not) to be represented.

No self-insertion?
No, that was not the matter, as there is already a lot to tell, and it was not obvious how to do so anyway: which way to put herself? So rather than directly retelling how she herself was informed, might as well build a narrative.

Did the author have to remove sensitive information, e.g. top secret stuff?
No, she did not have to remove anything of the sort, she assumes she was not told of such things in the first place. Some intimate aspects where not told, but that’s it.

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¹ He journalised.