Heike Walpot

Second DLR selection group , Heike Walpot below left

Heike Walpot (born June 19, 1960 as Heike John in Düsseldorf , North Rhine-Westphalia ) is a German traffic pilot and doctor who became known as a competitive swimmer and aspiring astronaut .

Life

youth

Heike Walpot grew up in Aachen as the daughter of the sports pedagogue and professor emeritus of the former Rhineland University of Education , Aachen department, Hans-Georg John (* 1929). After four years in elementary school, she switched to St. Leonhard Gymnasium . During this time she started competitive sports and soon became a successful swimmer. Just two years after the start of training, she became a member of the German national swimming team in 1974 (until 1981), took top places at the European youth championships the following year and was German runner-up on 100 and 200 meters back. In 1976 she took part in the Olympic Games in Montreal , but did not reach any of the finals. At the European Championships in Sweden Jonkoping she won in 1977 with the 4 × 100-meter medley relay bronze medal, took over 100-meter backstroke 7th place and was over 100-meter backstroke EM-eighth. In 1978 she was the first German female swimmer to break the 5-minute mark in the 400-meter medley and for the first time remained below 2:20 minutes over the 200-meter back. In total she took part in over 50 international competitions in her career, set 13 German records, was German champion eight times and runner-up nine times.

education

After graduating from high school, Walpot studied medicine at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) from 1980 . She successfully completed her physics course after four semesters and received her doctorate in 1986 as “Dr. med. ”She specialized in anesthesiology and intensive care medicine and started working as an assistant doctor in the anesthesiology department of the RWTH Clinic at the beginning of 1987. She was looking for ways to improve the filtering of blood products or for new methods to reduce contamination of infusion solutions. She produced an educational film for doctors and nurses.

canditature

In August 1986, what was then the German Research and Research Institute for Aerospace (DFVLR) - the predecessor of today's German Aerospace Center  - on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Research published a list of scientific astronauts in all major daily newspapers for the second German Spacelab flight (D -2) wanted. A university degree in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, or engineering as well as several years of research was required. In addition, a doctorate in the areas mentioned was an advantage. A good general mental and physical condition as well as excellent knowledge of English combined with an age limit of 35 years were required.

It was Heike's husband at the time, Luc Walpot , who came from Belgium (and now works for ZDF ) , who encouraged her to apply. He discovered the ad and showed it to his wife.

1,799 national interested parties responded to the call, but only 40 percent of them met the required criteria. 312 applicants were shortlisted. After the first medical questioning about hereditary and allergic diseases or ametropia, another 76 had to give up. These 236 applicants were subjected to a wide variety of knowledge and psychological tests. Only 9.7 percent (23) remained. The subsequent health tests (balance, circulation) let another ten candidates fail. In the end, 13 people (9 men and 4 women) prevailed. A jury, which also included the three veteran astronauts Merbold , Furrer and Messerschmid , finally selected the five candidates.

The then Research Minister Riesenhuber presented the five finalists to the public in August 1987. In addition to Heike Walpot (the youngest in the team at the age of 27), the teacher and meteorologist Renate Brümmer and the physicists Gerhard Thiele , Hans Schlegel and Ulrich Walter strengthened the German astronaut corps.

training

The five space flight aspirants began in March 1988 at the DFVLR headquarters in Cologne with the actual astronaut training (the first “trial courses” had already been held beforehand, the group undertook its first parabolic flights in the USA at the end of 1987 ). In 1990, with the exception of Walpot, all of them were shortlisted as payload specialists for the second German Spacelab flight ( D-2 ). Since then, the four Germans have trained alternately in Cologne and in Huntsville at the Marshall Space Center and the Johnson Space Center in Houston .

After Schlegel and Walter were finally chosen to participate in STS-55 in 1992 , Walpot decided to leave the German space travel team. During the D-2 flight she worked as a liaison officer at the DLR center in Oberpfaffenhofen . She then helped set up the international environmental project GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) . In the summer of 1996, she switched to Deutsche Lufthansa as a pilot and, as co-pilot, steered Boeing 737 and later Boeing 747s .

Heike Walpot is married to the spaceman Hans Wilhelm Schlegel for the second time and has three children with him and a daughter from his first marriage.

See also

• List of spacemen

Web links

• spacefacts.de
• Heike John in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )