Posted on 01/18/2003 12:59:55 PM PST by yonif
Israel's first astronaut, mission payload specialist Col. Ilan Ramon, is a career fighter pilot who bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, a senior official said.
The attack, in which eight IAF F-16 warplanes obliterated the French-built Osiraq reactor near Baghdad, was a milestone in Israeli aviation history because the planes flew over enemy Arab territory for hours without detection.
The pilots flew in a tightly bunched formation to send off a radar signal like that of a large commercial airliner.
In 1998, an Iraqi defector claimed the Israeli attack spurred Saddam Hussein to speed up plans to build a nuclear bomb.
Meanwhile, with the Columbia space shuttle successfully launched on Thursday, Ramon, 48, will focus on carrying out a series of scientific experiments.
Among the materials taken along are genetically engineered adult stem cell cultures, which will be used for an experiment prepared by scientists from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
It focuses on building new, specialized cells by isolating adult stem cells taken from bone marrow and converting them into bone, cartilage, or tendon cells by introducing specific genes into them.
The experiment will advance the stem cell work of Prof. Dan Gazit of the skeletal biotechnology laboratory at HU's Faculty of Dental Medicine. Gazit and his wife Dr. Sulma Gazit are guests of the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency and witnessed the launch of the space shuttle.
The shuttle crew will examine the influence of weightlessness on the creation of bone cells in space as compared to their development on earth. The findings are likely to have bearing on understanding the mechanisms involved in development of osteoporosis in astronauts and also the molecular influences involved in creating bone cells in space and on earth.
Ramon, a mechanical engineering graduate of Tel Aviv University, will be on board with his fellow astronauts for 16 days.
TAU has scheduled a special mid-mission conference call between university scientists and journalists on Monday to update them on the team's experiments. Among these is the Mediterranean Israeli Dust Experiment, which will include five of the seven astronauts on board and a crew in a specially outfitted plane flown in the footsteps of the orbiting space shuttle Columbia while it flies over the Mediterranean Sea. They will simultaneously take measurements and study the effect of dust particles on climate change.
Meanwhile, in a speech delivered by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the Scientific Club of the Association of the Friends of the Weizmann Institute, he said he was pleased to send greetings to Israel's first astronaut.
A few minutes before arriving at the meeting, he had a phone conversation with Ramon, whom he described as "a man busting with national pride."
"Col. Ramon's flight and his mission into space are a source of honor to us all, and his success is yet another step in Israel's integration into the space age. We wish him and the entire crew of the Columbia space shuttle success in their mission and a safe return home," said Sharon. President Moshe Katsav sent a microfiche Bible the size of a credit card to Ramon to take with him on his shuttle mission.
Katsav wished Ramon success and said Ramon will also conduct experiments for Israeli institutions. Ramon's father gave him some family photos to take into space, and a brother gave him a letter to read in orbit.
Israel's own two-decade old space program has been beset by costly failures, most notably the aborted launch of a $50 million spy satellite in 1998.
Greer Fay Cashman contributed to this report.
So9
Will this be your last word on explaining it away?
Where is the inconsistancy. The first two reffer to the actions of our government. The final reffers to the actions of the Israelis.
mach.08 responded
Jeesh, you have a pitiful ,hate-filled bias regarding this subject,so the tribe uncorking the nuclear genie at Los Alamos were not MONSTERS????
What tribe did this? You are blaming all Jews for this?
At any rate, the A-Bomb saved lives uin WW2.
The act of pummeling civilians was at Dresden not an act of a monster????
If you will note, Field Marshall Arthur "Bomber" Harris was reviled after the war.
Personally, I am appalled by the night bombing campaings of the British in Europe and the Us in Japan. However, the US did try precision daylight bombing. Admittedly, this was not very precise, but the attmpt was made to hit factories, not civilians. I see a real moral difference here.
Excuse me, but WW2 was not about hand to hand combat on the battlefield. An I don't appreciate your attempts at minimizing our soldiers deaths on the battlefield.
Excuse me, but soldier are supposed to die in war. It sucks, but is part of life.
Did it ever occur to you that our B-17s played a huge role in cutting off, fresh water, food, (most life sustaining support systems)to ALL the people of GERMANY, They were under seize from the whole world, so why is it a mystery to you that the conditions of these POW camps would be nothing less than deplorable.
Excuse me, but I'm talking about the DEATH CAMPS, not the POW facilities. I'm talking about the intentional slaughter of civilians done on a personal level.
I'm truly sorry for ALL the humans who received extremely undignified treatment in the conflict, but it was WAR,and to pompously come on THIS forum and tell me that your relatives lives were more important than mine, especilly when mine were engaged in saving yours, is pitifull.
Huh? Saving Jews was never a goal of the US in World War 2. Hell, we failed to even bomb the train tracks leading to death camps.
You are truely despicable. You label anyone who does not agree with your every thought an anti-semite.
I am not an anti-semite, but an anti-zionist. Can you understand te difference or is your mind corrupted completely by agitprop? I wish to move all middle eastern jews to the US. Grant them instant citizenship and have doen with the bone of contention that is Israel.
No, I reserve that for really special people, like you. To categorize someone as "Zionist" is a give-away of your basic anti-Semetism. You just try to dress it up with that term "anti-Zionism", but the facts speak for themselves.
And yes, in your pathetic mindset, I am truely dispicable. But then again, that is your pathetic, anti-Semetic mindset. I hope your brown shirt and jackboots aren't too uncomfortable, Adolph!
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