Last thursday, there was another opportunity to meet Frank Dewinne.
As time goes by, our astronaut becomes better and better during public appearences.

To compare the US with the Russian way of dealing with manned spaceflight, he recalled the screwdrivers episodes.

At one point, while performing an experiment in the US side, he needed a screwdriver. He asks Peggy for a specific screwdriver.
Ah, ok, she says, come with me. She goes to the Computer and types instructions and gets the answer. Frank understands the screwdriver is in the Destiny Module, rack 8, box 21-B, behind closet A9....Goes there and finds it. Of course, once finished, it must return back to the same place.

A day later, Frank works in the Russian module and he once again needs a special screwdriver, asks Valery for the screwdriver, who says:"No problem, look here", pointing around him and sure enough, a screwdriver was floating , attached.
Afterwards, he returns back asking "where do I put it back" ; "Aah, just find a place" answers the Russian.

The Russians are operation oriented while the Americans are technology oriented.
What is the best way to send astronauts to other worlds?

Imagine: a computer failure occures and a screwdriver is needed to repair the computer but you can't find it because its storage is only known in the database in the computer....And the spaceship is on its way to Mars.
OTOH, during one of the computer shutdowns aboard Mir, and loss of control of Mir's attitude, the cosmonauts found themselves in full darkness, rushing to the Soyuz but were unable to find the switches on the Soyuz dashboard to bring power in the Soyuz batteries and undock the capsule from the station (just in case); they had to wait until sunlight entered the small window.

Raoul