1
If you can't decide, ask yourself which choice will pay you back more in the future than it does now. The easy choice pays off straight away; the better choice pays off in the end.
Episode 7 · March 4, 2026 · 1h 23min
She Had a 0.07% Chance: How Samantha Cristoforetti Became the First Italian Woman in Space
In Buona Compagnia is an Italian podcast. This is the English version of the episode: the video has English subtitles, and the transcript, reflections and sources are translated. The book quotes in this episode are our own translation from the Italian original, Diario di un'apprendista astronauta; the book is published in English as Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut (Allen Lane/Penguin, 2020), whose wording may differ. Versione italiana →
A 0.07% chance of becoming an astronaut: that was the number Samantha Cristoforetti had against her when, in 2008, she applied for the ESA selection. 10,000 candidates, 6 places. She was 31, didn’t have enough flight hours, and had an AMX fighter-bomber to learn to fly. Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut is her autobiography.
The first step is an online questionnaire, which she fills in with maniacal attention. Of the 10,000, 1,000 are left, then 192, then 6. In the group selection in Cologne she takes the initiative in place of a paralysed group, and comes out convinced she has ruined everything. Two months later the email arrives: “Dear astronaut candidate, I am pleased to congratulate you.”
Then six years of training. Between the 8G centrifuge, the pressurised suits underwater and the simulations where a one-degree error in the re-entry angle means dying, she moves between Houston and Star City near Moscow, where Yuri Gagarin had also trained. When the assignment to Expedition 42/43 arrives, a 30-month countdown begins.
When she finally leaves, on 24 November 2014, she becomes the first Italian woman in space. The sentence she often repeats to the boys and girls she meets is the same one she closes the book with: “having a dream matters because of the journey, not the destination.”
She Had a 0.07% Chance: How Samantha Cristoforetti Became the First Italian Woman in Space
Samantha Cristoforetti
0:00 1:23:53
She Had a 0.07% Chance: How Samantha Cristoforetti Became the First Italian Woman in Space
Now playing
She Had a 0.07% Chance: How Samantha Cristoforetti Became the First Italian Woman in Space
Ten key reflections from the episode
2
I had never had an obsessive relationship with my dream of becoming an astronaut. For me it had always been important to focus on the daily commitment.
3
Nothing is more effective than an immediate danger for imposing a new focus and mobilising the full power of concentration.
4
I tend to look at what will be with curiosity rather than at what has been with nostalgia.
5
If you have the feeling that something is wrong, it's probably because something is wrong.
6
The best training is the kind in which you make every possible mistake.
7
I don't want to fall into the trap of judging the worth of a commitment by whether or not it succeeds. I don't want to accept that it's success that decides, after the fact, whether pursuing an unlikely goal is determination or naivety, tenacity or obsession.
8
From an ambitious goal you draw the motivation to commit yourself fully, to choose the harder road, the one that lets you grow. Having a dream matters because of the journey, not the destination.
9
Whoever achieves the dream may arrogantly delude themselves that success is solely the result of their own actions, forgetting the favourable circumstances. Those watching from outside may in turn convince themselves that this person has a special talent and an infallible method for succeeding. There's no shortage of books and interviews in which people considered successful hand out advice, but what stays hidden is the great crowd of those who have just as much talent and acted in the world in the same way, without receiving any similar reward. I think it would be a hugely important good if we all went back to recognising the role that luck inevitably plays in human affairs, and if we looked with measured admiration at those who achieve their dreams, and with equally measured admiration at those who pursue them with dignified commitment, even when circumstances aren't favourable.
10
Those who are motivated every day to give their best, to choose the most demanding roads knowing they are opportunities to grow, certainly have a better chance of leading a fulfilling life, even if the dream that drove that commitment hasn't come true.
