Astronaut turns into Israeli icon By Michael Cabbage Orlando Sentinel January 12, 2003 http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/custom/space/ orl-ramon12011203jan12,0,4006957.story?coll=orl-home-headlines JERUSALEM -- Israel's first astronaut is set to ride to orbit aboard space shuttle Columbia this week on an odyssey steeped as heavily in politics and religion as in science. Officially, Israeli air force Col. Ilan Ramon's mission is to conduct a dust-monitoring experiment designed by Tel Aviv University scientists and take part in other research during the shuttle's 16-day flight. Unofficially, his planned launch Thursday is a very public demonstration of close U.S.-Israeli ties at a time when the war-torn Middle East appears more volatile than ever. Ramon's flight was inspired in 1995 by an innocent question from an Israeli diplomat's young son. Since then, it has become a watershed event for Jews here in Israel and around the world. The significance isn't lost on the 48-year-old former combat pilot, whose mother survived the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. "When I first started this, I didn't realize how big it was for Israelis and Jews," Ramon said. "I am a Holocaust survivor's son, an Israeli pilot and, now, an astronaut. People can't believe it. It's very emotional for me also." The soft-spoken engineer already is a celebrity in Israel. Endless newspaper and television coverage has made Ilan Ramon a household name. His decision to observe the Jewish Sabbath and eat kosher food in orbit is transforming him into a national icon. Israeli politicians and schoolchildren alike have been dazzled by Ramon's personal appearances to discuss his upcoming mission. "The Year of Space" was proclaimed in 2002, partly in his honor. A postage stamp was issued commemorating his launch. While the recognition has put Ramon well on the way to folk-hero status at home, many fear it also has made him an inviting target for anti-Israeli terrorists. Even so, he downplays concerns about safety. Ramon insists he has complete confidence that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is doing everything possible to protect him and his six shuttle crewmates. "For Israelis, it is part of our lives," said Ramon, a veteran of two wars. "I've been in the air force for 30 years. I'm used to being a target." International intimacy The idea for Ramon's flight began with a 5-year-old boy. Jeremy Issacharoff, the former political counselor at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, had taken his son, Dean, to visit the National Air and Space Museum. The elder Issacharoff had been brainstorming on new initiatives for an upcoming summit meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and President Clinton. As the two toured the museum, Dean stopped at a space-shuttle exhibit. He noticed a number of non-U.S. astronauts, including a member of the Saudi royal family, had flown on the shuttle. His question was simple: "Daddy, why isn't there an Israeli astronaut?" The proverbial light bulb flashed on above Issacharoff's head. "I wasn't sure how to broach the idea," said Issacharoff, now deputy director for strategic affairs at the Israeli foreign ministry in Jerusalem. "I thought they might think I had gone a bit nuts. I said 'My kid had this idea. What do you think?' " Issacharoff got a reply from Itamar Rabinovich, Israel's ambassador to the United States, a few days before the summit: Go for it. Following discussions with the National Security Council and NASA, Clinton announced after a meeting with Peres that an Israeli astronaut would fly on a future shuttle mission. NASA and the Israel Space Agency signed a cooperative agreement in 1996. Both sides agreed there needed to be a legitimate scientific purpose behind any Israeli astronaut's trip to orbit. "We felt it was not worthwhile just to send a guy up with flags and mementos to say 'I was there,' " said Akiva Bar-Nun, a planetary science professor at Tel Aviv University and former director of the Israel Space Agency. "NASA felt the same way." Finding an astronaut Israeli and NASA researchers eventually settled on a Tel Aviv University proposal called the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment -- or MEIDEX, for short. Scientists long have wondered about the impact of dust particles in the atmosphere on global climate and rainfall. MEIDEX will use a multispectral camera aboard Columbia to study how dust from the Sahara Desert is distributed across North Africa, the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. "The thing we know very little about is the effect of particles on clouds and precipitation," said Zev Levin, a professor of atmospheric physics at Tel Aviv University and one of the project's principal scientists. "This is one of the particular areas we are trying to understand." While researchers nailed down the mission's scientific rationale, another search was under way to find the person who would become the first Israeli in space. The Israel Space Agency already had about two dozen applications from scientists and former pilots who wanted the job. To fly on the shuttle, however, candidates required considerable screening. There was one place where people already had passed similar tests. Israeli officials approached the same group the United States and the Soviet Union had turned to at the dawn of the Space Age almost 40 years earlier -- military pilots. "Maybe it wasn't fair to all of the other people, but we didn't have the time or money," said Aby Har-Even, director of the Israel Space Agency. "I told the air force to find someone they thought was one of the best pilots, who also was an engineer or scientist." One evening in 1997, Ramon -- then the head of weapons development and acquisition at Israeli air force headquarters -- was at his desk when the phone rang. The voice on the other end asked whether he wanted to apply to be an astronaut. In Israel, the term astronaut often is used as an insult to describe those who are unstable or have their head in the clouds. "I thought it was a joke," Ramon said. It wasn't. Ramon had everything the air force was looking for in a prospective astronaut. He was a gifted pilot and team player. He had a technical background. And he had been involved in conducting experiments in the air force. Whether by accident or design, the air force also had found a candidate in Ramon whose life and family history mirrored Israel's birth and struggle for survival. Ramon's father left Germany for Tel Aviv in 1935 after Adolf Hitler's rise to power. A Zionist, he fought for Israel's independence after World War II. Ramon's mother was a native of Poland who was shipped to the notorious Auschwitz death camp with her mother by the Nazis. "My grandmother was very sick and almost died," Ramon said. "My mother was 16 or 17 years old and she insisted on staying with her." After spending a year and a half in the camp, Ramon's mother and grandmother were liberated by the Russians. Other relatives didn't survive. The pair attempted to enter Israel after the war on one of countless ships packed with illegal Jewish immigrants fleeing Europe. They were expelled to Cyprus, but returned to Israel in 1949 after the country had proclaimed its independence. Ramon's father, now 79, and the astronaut's lone sibling, an older brother who is an Israeli restaurant operator, plan to attend this week's launch. His 75-year-old mother is an Alzheimer's patient who no longer can travel. Combat veteran Ramon was born in a suburb of Tel Aviv in 1954. When he was 8, his family moved to the town of Beer Sheva in Israel's Negev Desert. There, he grew up and attended high school. "He was very popular," said Hagit Messer-Yaron, a former classmate who now is the chief scientist at Israel's Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport. "He stood out without being a showoff." When Ramon was 16, a neighbor who worked with his father took Ramon for a ride in his small Cessna airplane. Ramon got to take the controls. He was hooked. "To this day," Ramon said, chuckling, "he thinks I owe him my career." Like all Israeli youths, Ramon began compulsory military service after graduating from high school in 1972. He joined the air force. The Yom Kippur War broke out the next year when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel. Ramon took part, then graduated from flight school as a fighter pilot in 1974. Ramon was chosen in 1980 to be part of the team that would establish the first F-16 squadron in Israel. In a controversial move, the United States had agreed after much debate to sell Israel some of the advanced fighter jets strictly for defensive purposes. Ramon and other handpicked Israelis were sent to Hill Air Force Base outside Ogden, Utah, for F-16 training. Dov Cohen, now head of space systems at Israel Aircraft Industries, was an engineer who spent time in Utah with Ramon learning about the F-16's radar, navigation and fire-control systems. "After I got to fly backseat in the F-16, I realized the talents a fighter pilot needs to fly the airplane," Cohen said. "They have to be so precise, so multitalented, so disciplined. He [Ramon] had all of those qualities." Ramon returned to Israel in 1981 as a deputy squadron commander. The next two years were intense. In June 1981, the squadron attacked and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear facility under construction near Baghdad. The attack was harshly condemned by the United Nations and the Reagan administration. In June 1982, Ramon took part in Israel's bombing and invasion of neighboring Lebanon, an effort by the Israeli military to root out Palestinian guerrillas there. When asked about combat operations, he politely gives a generic reply: "I would rather not talk about that." He left the air force in 1983, then a 29-year-old combat veteran, to earn an electrical and computer engineering degree from Tel Aviv University. While attending the university, Ramon met his wife, Rona, at a neighbor's party and married her after a half-year courtship. He graduated in 1987 and returned to the air force. For the next decade, Ramon worked his way up the chain of command -- F-16 squadron commander, head of the aircraft branch of the operations department, head of weapons development and acquisition -- until the phone call came. After discussing it with Rona, Ramon enthusiastically agreed to be an astronaut candidate. The Israeli air force chose him after a short selection process. Ramon, his wife, their three sons and one daughter -- now ages 5 to 14 -- packed up and moved to Houston. In July 1998, he and another Israeli air force pilot selected as his backup, Itzhak Mayo, began astronaut training at Johnson Space Center. Going kosher Ramon doesn't consider himself a religious person. Nevertheless, he plans to showcase his religious heritage far more than several Jewish-American astronauts who have flown before him. Ramon's decision to eat mostly kosher food in orbit earned kudos from Jewish groups worldwide. "In Israel, we don't feel like we have to prove we are Jewish," Ramon said. "Outside of Israel, it is very important, so we decided to do it." Ramon touched off a debate among rabbinical scholars by asking when he should observe the Jewish Sabbath. Jewish law dictates that the traditional day of rest occurs every seven days. However, the sun rises and sets every 90 minutes in orbit. The solution: Ramon will observe the Sabbath according to Cape Canaveral or Houston time. However, he will work that day like the rest of the crew. Like all astronauts, Ramon will carry to space a few personal items, including jewelry, watches and flags. But one particular item -- a 60-year-old drawing -- has received the most attention. Ramon asked an Israeli Holocaust remembrance organization for something to take with him. The group chose a haunting piece of artwork depicting a lunar landscape with Earth in the background. The picture was one of dozens drawn by 14-year-old Peter Ginz, a young Jewish artist and writer who died at Auschwitz in 1944. "This is a fulfillment of his thoughts and the spirit of this young guy who was murdered by the Nazis," Ramon said. Ramon also will carry to space another artifact of Judaism: several small cases called mezuzahs that contain tiny scrolls with inscriptions from the Book of Deuteronomy and that hang in the doorways of Jewish homes. The collection will include a special silver and copper barbed-wire mezuzah crafted by the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. An 'attractive target' NASA classifies Ramon as a payload specialist, a category reserved for one-time astronauts heading to space with a specific experiment or piece of cargo. But besides monitoring MEIDEX, he will help with many of the mission's other 80 or so experiments. Ramon also will spend time as a guinea pig for life-science research, donating blood and urine as well as monitoring his breathing while cycling and at rest. "He is pulling as much weight as anybody on the crew," said Rick Husband, Columbia's commander. None of the crew -- least of all Ramon -- admits to being overly concerned about security. But there is little question that the presence of an Israeli on a U.S. space shuttle makes the mission a higher-profile target. To safeguard the astronauts, NASA is taking the usual post-Sept. 11 precautions to guard the air, land and sea surrounding Kennedy Space Center. None of the security arrangements are being made public. "The shuttle today unfortunately is a very attractive target for terrorists," said Mayo, Ramon's former backup. "But we think the security will be there." Will Ramon's mission signal an opportunity for other Israelis such as Mayo to fly? Probably not -- at least in the near term. Although NASA picked up the considerable cost of Ramon's training, Israel's cash-starved space agency can't afford to create an astronaut corps. There already is debate among scientists on how to distribute Israel's meager space resources. Almost no one thinks it would best be spent on more astronauts. "Longer-term, the effect of Ilan's flight will be on the younger generation and their education," Mayo said. "Hopefully, more will become interested in space." Science notwithstanding, Ramon's immediate impact may be to provide hope and a brief distraction for an embattled country consumed with suicide bombings, a bitter election campaign, religious strife and a deepening economic crisis. That might be more remarkable than any research breakthrough. "It will be very nice to see an Israeli fly in space," said Moshe Bar-Lev, president of ImageSat International, a Tel Aviv company that distributes satellite photography. "These days, we need good things to happen." ---------- Michael Cabbage can be reached at mcabbage@orlandosentinel.com Copyright © 2003, Orlando Sentinel