Happiness Quote by Claude Nicollier

Gratitude is doing double duty here: it’s personal sincerity, and it’s institutional fluency. Claude Nicollier’s line reads like the carefully pressurized language of spaceflight culture, where individual ambition has to be translated into collective purpose. “Privileged” signals humility, but it also cues the public to see astronaut selection as stewardship rather than self-promotion. In a field funded by taxpayers and governed by multilayered international partnerships, you don’t just want to go to space; you want to be “part of this mission.”

The repetition - “very, very,” then “really very, very” - is telling. It’s not poetic; it’s human leakage through a professional script. Astronauts are trained to speak in checklists and calm affect, yet selection is an emotional earthquake: years of preparation, medical scrutiny, and competitive filtering condensed into one announcement. The doubled intensifiers sound like someone trying to keep awe from tipping into boastfulness. He’s ecstatic, but he’s also aware that ecstasy can read as ego.

There’s subtext in the passive framing: “when my nomination was announced,” “to be selected.” The agency belongs to the institution. That’s not self-erasure as much as a nod to how space programs work: you are chosen, assigned, integrated. Especially for an ESA astronaut operating alongside NASA, the phrase becomes diplomatic. Nicollier isn’t selling a lone-hero narrative; he’s reinforcing the idea that space is a coordinated project, and that the person in the suit is the most visible component of a huge, mostly invisible machine.