Roman Romanenko

I think the people that want to fly in space, who want to work in space, who want to go to station, these people realize that there is a risk inherent to what they do. They understand that there are possible off-nominal situations, dangerous situations in space, and there's no insurance against that.

All children of cosmonauts went to one school. We all lived in the same neighborhood, Star City, and all of us, children of cosmonauts, were in the center of attention from the teachers and general inhabitants of the Star City, and so it was difficult in that respect.

Finally my dream came true in that there was a possibility that I could travel to the International Space Station. I've gone through the medicals and the training and now I'm officially, by the Russian Space Federation, a cosmonaut in training.

The historical novelist has to consider what has actually happened, while the SF writer is dealing in possibilities, but they are both in the business of imagining a world unlike our own and yet connected to it.