Frank De Winne: Well, first you need to be a well trained astronaut, you need to have some flight experience behind you. I had my first flight in 2002 and I had a lot of training here at the European Astronaut Center - I think that's an important aspect.
Another aspect is you need to be a good communicator. As commander you need to communicate with the ground [control] and with the crew. You need to bring the crew together, because as Tim Peake explained [at a press conference in June], all the crew are individually very well trained. But you need to make a team out of it, and that's what it is to be a good commander. And then you have to be lucky as well, because-
Is it really a case of luck?
It is really luck, because you can be assigned to an expedition, where it is decided that the Russians will have the command, and then it's not even there for us to get. So this is a balance that is sought between the Americans, Canadians, Japanese, Europeans and Russians, and we share the commandership 50-50. So you need a bit of luck.
So you could have the situation where a commander who has been a commander a number of times, becomes a "normal" crew member on a future mission, despite their experience?
Yes, we could have that, and it would not be the first time. But this former commander can be a mentor for the new commander. We want to share as much as possible the experience and the knowledge we gain through our missions. We cannot invest everything in one single person. We do this as a community. We do this for the future of humanity. We don't do this for individuals.
