Name: Yuri Pavlovich Gidzenko
Call sign: Uran (Uranus)
Personal data: 38 years old, married, two sons — Sergei, 14, and Sasha, (nickname for Alexander), who is 11.
Past life: lieutenant colonel in the Russian air force.
Extra credit: Moscow State University degrees in land surveying and cartography.
Likes: jumping out of airplanes — he has made 145 parachute jumps — and team sports
Previous spaceflights: commander of one Mir mission lasting 179 days.
Current position: Soyuz commander, Expedition 1, International Space Station.
Landed post: after 1996 squabble over who would command the Expedition 1 crew. Gidzenko replaced senior Russian cosmonaut Anatoli Solovyev, who refused to fly under American commander William Shepherd.
Flexibility: “I didn’t see any difference (whether an American or a Russian was the commander). When I was a Mir space station crew member, I was the commander. I can give or take orders. It is not difficult to be with Shep.”
Risky business: “I don’t consider my job dangerous. There are a lot more dangerous professions on the ground … like being a truck driver.”
Favorite American food: everything. “American food is maybe more spicy than Russian food.”
Philosophy of life: “There is a phrase from the Orient culture that I like. Everyone has to grow his child, to build house and to plant a tree. And if you’ve managed to do all that, then your life has not been in vain.”
