NOVA TV: Coffee with Maxim Behar and His Wife Veneta

Gala: Just a few days ago they returned from their space adventure after completing a training course at the NASA center in Alabama. What does it feel like to experience zero gravity, to walk on the surface of the Moon, and to collect samples for research? Well, we’re about to find out from my special guests today, Maxim Behar and his wife Veneta. Wow, look at you!

Veneta: Hello, Gala!

Gala: I’m very happy. Welcome. It’s such a pleasure. Welcome.

Maxim: I’m very happy to see you again.

Gala: Wait a second. Are these the clothes you wore there, or did you just take them as a souvenir?

Maxim: No, no, no. This was our uniform the entire time.

Veneta: These are the astronaut suits that all astronauts in Alabama train in.

Gala: Seriously?

Veneta: Yes, absolutely seriously. These are real astronaut suits. If you look at NASA photos online, all astronauts are wearing these suits.

Gala: Sit down so I can offer you some coffee. Did you drink coffee there?

Maxim: No. (laughs) American coffee.

Gala: Don’t say such a thing.

Veneta: It really was American coffee.

Gala: Ah yes, so it’s not really drinkable, I understand. I was wondering if there were any restrictions.

Veneta: No, no.

Gala: I have to admit something—Maxim, I’ll turn to you here because I know all the cool and meaningful things you’ve done and we’ve talked about them, but you also do some pretty crazy things. This one honestly surprised me.

Maxim: It’s not that crazy. You’re right, Gala. Veneta and I walked the Camino, we wrote a book, I sang with Misho Shamara, and we made several wonderful songs.

Gala: Cool, but still crazy.

Maxim: This is what I call stepping outside the comfort zone. When you leave that comfort zone—the everyday office life, communication with clients and colleagues—you start feeling different. You see life from the outside. In December I had a birthday, and on Sunday we gathered at home with the kids to think about what challenge we could create for the birthday. In the invitation I sent to my guests, I wrote: “Please don’t bring me gifts.” Because we all know that after every birthday we usually end up with 50 bottles of wine and four whiskey sets.

Gala: And you have so many friends that there’s always someone to drink those 50 bottles of wine with.

Maxim: Exactly. So I simply said, “Please don’t bring me gifts. Here’s a QR code—if you want, you can support my next challenge. Veneta and I are going to space training.”

Gala: Had you talked about something like that before? And are you even a fan of things like that, Veneta?

Veneta: I’m a huge fan of things like that. In fact, sometimes I’m the one who provokes them. No, we hadn’t talked about it before. The idea came up one Sunday at home with the kids while we were thinking about what to do for Maxim’s birthday this time. The idea came absolutely spontaneously.

Gala: You embraced it immediately, with no resistance.

Maxim: Veneta suggested that we collect money to sponsor a young person from Bulgaria through the Hello Space project that we run with the Atlantic Club, so they could potentially go to training in the United States. Then I picked up the space topic and said, “Wait a minute—why don’t we go ourselves? We can easily send a young person later.” While we were talking, I started searching on my phone. I discovered the Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, a small town in the state of Alabama. We applied immediately, and they told us there were no available spots. This training happens only once a year.

Gala: And as far as I understand, very few people are accepted, so that makes sense.

Veneta: It’s a program that takes place once a year. It’s the longest program the center offers and it’s only for adults.

Maxim: So I found them, but there were no free spots. I wrote something like an essay where I told them how important it was that I had a birthday.

Gala: You can make them find space.

Maxim: I told them this was very important for us, and since it only happens once a year—and there was no other similar training in the program. Otherwise they have children there every day for one-day visits. Then they replied and said, “Okay, in that case we’ll open two additional spots.” And that’s how Veneta and I ended up in Alabama.

Gala: What is this center like?

Veneta: This center is an enormous complex with museums, rockets, ground stations where you can see what is happening in space in real time. There is a simulation of a station where lettuce, vegetables, and food are grown in space. There are real rocket engines, models of rockets that have flown in space, and actual rockets that have been built. There’s even the entire control panel of one of the first Apollo missions, built by IBM. Its memory is only 64 GB, and you wonder how something like that even flew into space.

Maxim: What’s very important is that this is actually the place where astronauts flying on American spacecraft are trained and prepared—including Russians. Right now there are two Russians on the American station. Twenty-one graduates of our course have become astronauts, and their photos are displayed there with a big sign that says: “You can be one of them.” It’s something unique, because in about ten days we went through the same training that real astronauts go through—with the difference that we took a plane back to Sofia afterward.

Gala: And the others take the rocket and go…

Maxim: They continue doing it for years. Every morning we had breakfast with interesting people they called “docents.” It’s their own terminology. These are people over 80 years old who worked at NASA—engineers, software specialists—now retired, and they’ve given them this role. When visitors come for training, they have breakfast with them and share fascinating stories. One of these docents, Charlie, told us about mistakes and said: “Here you can make mistakes. Up there in space you cannot, because in space there is no gray area—only black and white.”

Gala: Where were the people from? I know the center is international.

Maxim: Mostly Americans, and two Bulgarians.

Veneta: No, there was a boy from the Netherlands.

Maxim: From the Netherlands.

Veneta: Yes, and a girl from Thailand.

Maxim: But they were in neighboring groups.

Veneta: They were in neighboring groups, but the interesting thing was that the girl from Thailand and another girl from America were studying Space Management Operations. There is already such a specialty. People study how to operate ground stations, manage spacecraft logistics, and organize the entire mission.

Gala: Veneta, since we women are living in a very good time now when the world has opened its doors much more to women—what was it like there? How many men and how many women were there?

Veneta: I would say almost equal.

Maxim: Yes, almost equal. Maybe five women and ten men, or six women and nine men.

Veneta: The numbers were slightly different in the two groups.

Gala: So there wasn’t a male dominance—roughly balanced. Ten days—how was the program structured? Was it divided into modules?

Maxim: We went through all kinds of training: working inside a space station, operating mission control to command the station. On the last day we went to Mars. That was the most exhausting mission for me personally, because the day before we trained for four or five hours for that mission, and then we spent the entire day on Mars.

Gala: Wait—what do you mean you trained and then you were there? What exactly does that mean?

Maxim: We enter the spacecraft and start operating it. Each person has a specific role. There were five of us.

Veneta: Five people in the spacecraft team. There were seven people at the ground station and two people whose mission was to repair the spacecraft because something had malfunctioned in space.

Gala: Real situations. So do you actually have to land the spacecraft and understand when to do it?

Veneta: You have to take off, land on Mars—that was our mission—install the station there, establish communication, install power, provide oxygen, build the whole system. We even had an emergency situation because the station leader had to simulate fainting.

Gala: And you had to give first aid?

Veneta: Yes, we had to give him first aid.

Maxim: My role was that I had to fall to the ground with a broken arm.

Veneta: And we had to save him.

Maxim: My colleagues had to ask the medical team on Earth what to do—should we give him a painkiller injection, should we restrain him? They came and restrained me. Everything is exactly like in a real mission.

Gala: What made the spacewalk part so exhausting?

Maxim: Because we exit through a very small hatch. Everything is built one-to-one. You have to crawl through that opening.

Veneta: And you’re wearing a spacesuit.

Maxim: We had big helmets and additional white protective clothing that made movement even more difficult.

Veneta: And you sit inside the capsule the same way astronauts do during launch. The space is extremely small. I honestly wondered how four people will spend ten days there during future missions.

Gala: Tell me about the feeling of zero gravity. Do you feel light like a feather? Is it pleasant?

Veneta: To simulate zero gravity they took us underwater. At about seven or eight meters underwater you reach a state similar to weightlessness. They put us underwater in special suits and we had to play basketball and build a hexagonal structure. Everything moves very slowly—you have to coordinate carefully with the others.

Maxim: What Veneta demonstrated earlier is also a simulation of weightlessness. Those are special springs that pull you upward, and that’s called “walking on the Moon.” You feel almost weightless while trying to walk.

Veneta: It’s not that easy actually. The springs pull you in all directions, and you have to use a lot of effort to move forward.

Maxim: Another challenge was the way we lived. We stayed in very small rooms with several people per room—men separately, women separately.

Gala: Really? You weren’t together?

Maxim: No. Men were on the second floor, women on the third. The rooms had no windows.

Gala: Maybe to create the feeling that you’re in space.

Maxim: Exactly. The beds were simple bunk beds. We brought sleeping bags from Sofia, so you get into the sleeping bag and sleep.

Veneta: Compared to this, the Camino was a luxury version.

Maxim: But the most important thing about this challenge is that we wanted to truly experience it and show young people in Bulgaria that it is possible. If Maxim and Veneta can do it, Elena or Ivan can do it too. Through the Hello Space project we bring together 500–700 children every year. They have a direct connection with astronauts in real time for 30–40 minutes. They are extremely motivated to learn what space is like.

Gala: It would be wonderful if something like this existed here in Bulgaria.

Veneta: Two things impressed me the most. First, when you’re there everything suddenly feels possible—like you could jump into a spacecraft right away. From here it feels like something from another life. Second, when the instructors heard our accent and asked where we were from and we said Bulgaria, they immediately said: “You are very good at mathematics and physics. You have some of the best schools in the world.”

Gala: That gives me goosebumps.

Maxim: One of the courses we had was about the legal framework of space.

Veneta: We even had a debate.

Maxim: Who owns what in space? If Americans land on the Moon—but Russians, Israelis, or Japanese land there too—whose territory is it? Who decides? It’s a complex question.

Veneta: But NASA repeated a very strong message several times: they are open to cooperation and to integrating technologies from all countries.

Gala: Although the romantic view of space is beautiful, future conflicts might also happen there.

Maxim: Maybe we should first solve the conflicts on Earth.

Gala: Did you have exams?

Veneta: No formal exam, but you have simulations. If you haven’t learned the theory properly, your spacecraft will crash in the simulation.

Maxim: We also flew an F-16 simulator.

Veneta: Yes, we piloted an F-16 in a simulator.

Maxim: We learned about the history of American aviation and then each of us had a real cockpit simulator. You had to take off, land, and fire missiles.

Gala: Did you receive a certificate?

Veneta: Yes, we received certificates.

Maxim: And our team was awarded “Outstanding Team.”

Gala: Bravo!

Maxim: Today we’re presenting our experience at the Atlantic Club and encouraging young people to try this. I returned with 4,000 photos and hours of video.

Gala: Last question—did you have time to enjoy yourselves a little? A nice dinner, a glass of wine?

Maxim: Alcohol and cigarettes were forbidden there. On the last evening after we received our diplomas, Veneta and I went into Huntsville, had a glass of Italian wine, and shared a pizza.

Gala: That was it?

Maxim: That was it. But before that we spent two days in Nashville.

Veneta: We arrived two days earlier to adjust to the time zone and ended up in the middle of a huge celebration on February 14. There were concerts everywhere. We danced country music—it was phenomenal.

Gala: You’re wonderful. Thank you for sharing all this.

Maxim: Thank you. I want to tell everyone watching: it’s not that difficult. Try it. Space is worth it. It’s science, not just a physical challenge. The more we learn and explore, the better we become. We came back with three times more energy than we had before. And no one asked how old we were or why we were there.

Maxim: We brought you a gift, Gala. This is our photo with the Bulgarian flag at the base.

Gala: Wow!

Maxim: And the message says: “Space is closer than many people think.”

Veneta: Which is absolutely true.

Maxim: We respect you and we love you.

Gala: Thank you very much. I’ll place it there and enjoy looking at it.