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Interview with Mihai Ilie, hot air balloon flight World Champion
What does ARCA mean to you?
ARCA, I would say is an heterogeneous group, maybe,
comprised of many people
which are attracted by the idea of flight how they see it,
how we now see it actually in cosmic space.
I don't know if the old formula,
a band of crazy enthusiasts applies here,
but maybe it comes close to what ARCA is now
and what it wishes to be.
All kidding aside, however, it represents an extraordinary thing for many people
because it tried and it tries with all its might to show people,
primarily ourselves,
that it's possible to do extraordinary things
even though you don't have the financial support
which measures up to the things that you have set out to do.
What does the Google X Prize represent to you?
It's a competition that I believe changed a little bit the people's perception
about the method used to tackle certain subjects.
It made many think that it is possible to do things
without having the backing of extraordinarily complex structures,
and this gave wings to the imagination of many people
which are inclined to harness their imagination, enthusiasm
and work, towards findings solutions to certain problems, which would seem in a certain context
to be the privilege of only certain powerful and well financed institutions.
What does the E-111 represent to you?
A beautiful dream.
A dream which maybe we always have as adults or as adolescents, as children.
Dreams which we've always wished to see realized and incite us, with time, exist in this country.
I hope that this dream can become a reality.
I hope that once it becomes a reality, it will fly and will be that which we all wish for together,
the airship that will carry a Romanian rocket into the cosmos.
What does flight and the cosmos mean to you?
Flight was the thing which I have always thought about ever since I was very, very young,
from the birds that were flying around us to the planes that we saw at that time as unusual things.
I didn't really understand why and how they fly.
I think flying is happiness for those who succeed in practicing it, who can accomplish it.
For me it is a way of living, a way of trying to see life different from the way you see it on the ground.
The cosmos is the big, superior limit, further than what we can understand from reading
or from looking at documentaries.
It's something that's hard to accept as a goal or objective that you can reach.
I would say that those who succeed in reaching it
are people who reached supreme happiness in their day to day life.
What are your opinions of the team's coordinator?
Dani is a team leader that's hard to deal with sometimes.
He has great talent however, a great quality.
His will power, which a lot of times, is very, very hard to accept the way he imposes it,
but through his will power he succeeded and I think will continue to succeed to hold the team together tight,
to keep it united, to keep it active and always in action.
And probably, in the end, this great quality of his will help make this project
or future projects, probably, to become a reality.
He is, I would say, the boss you wish for in certain moments,
the boss that sometimes you might grumble about
or, maybe even hate in certain moments,
but I think he is the right man who can make ARCA what it is today
and probably what it will be in the future.