"I started this whole endeavor really. And at the beginning we had the selection in Italy. And that was pretty much among people that had held previous experience in that particular satellite. So, I was in that, in a good position then"
About this Quote
There is a quietly self-mythologizing impulse in Guidoni's phrasing, the kind you hear when a technical career brushes up against national pride and institutional gatekeeping. "I started this whole endeavor really" is doing more than taking credit; it's staking a claim in a domain where legacy is normally shared, bureaucratized, and carefully footnoted. Astronaut selection is rarely a lone-wolf story, yet he frames it as origin narrative: the person who was there first, before the machine fully formed.
The repetition and hedging ("really", "pretty much", "in that, in a good position then") reveal the tension between confidence and the astronaut's trained caution. This is not the polished bravado of a public figure; it's the verbal texture of someone used to precision, suddenly forced into storytelling. He wants the listener to understand that his advantage was earned, but he also knows how precarious it sounds to say it outright. So the sentence pads itself with qualifiers, as if he is building an airlock around the boast.
The context matters: Italy's space program, especially in earlier decades, operated through a narrower pipeline, often tied to specific missions, hardware, or "that particular satellite". Experience wasn't just merit; it was membership in a small, credentialed club. Guidoni is signaling that he belonged to the right cluster of expertise at the right moment, when selection was less open competition than curated succession. The subtext is simple and slightly sharp: in pioneering fields, being early is its own form of power.
The repetition and hedging ("really", "pretty much", "in that, in a good position then") reveal the tension between confidence and the astronaut's trained caution. This is not the polished bravado of a public figure; it's the verbal texture of someone used to precision, suddenly forced into storytelling. He wants the listener to understand that his advantage was earned, but he also knows how precarious it sounds to say it outright. So the sentence pads itself with qualifiers, as if he is building an airlock around the boast.
The context matters: Italy's space program, especially in earlier decades, operated through a narrower pipeline, often tied to specific missions, hardware, or "that particular satellite". Experience wasn't just merit; it was membership in a small, credentialed club. Guidoni is signaling that he belonged to the right cluster of expertise at the right moment, when selection was less open competition than curated succession. The subtext is simple and slightly sharp: in pioneering fields, being early is its own form of power.
Quote Details
| Topic | Career |
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