Speaker 1: Did the folks Welcome to the conversations. Have you ever
Speaker 1: wondered what it would be like to fly in space,
Speaker 1: you know, to walk in space, to work in space.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine what it was like. But our next
Speaker 1: guest has done all of that. Chris Hadfield is an astronaut,
Speaker 1: and he's been an astronaut, he was a fighter pilot.
Speaker 1: He's a writer, plays music as well. He joins us,
Speaker 1: Chris Hadfield walking to the program.
Speaker 2: My pleasure. Thanks.
Speaker 3: And in addition to those like just seemingly incomprehensible things
Speaker 3: that I've done, I've also flown three rocket ships to
Speaker 3: leave Earth and then flown them back down to land.
Speaker 3: It's just it amazes me actually to think of some
Speaker 3: of the stuff that's possible in life.
Speaker 1: Got amazing clarity in our vision. Here we're talking to
Speaker 1: you on zoom. Our radio listeners wouldn't understand that. But
Speaker 1: what camera are you using it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I have a nice camera, and when COVID hit, I thought, gosh,
Speaker 3: if I can't be there in person, I should get
Speaker 3: a good so I could describe it for you. It's
Speaker 3: a Sony A seven R with an auto focus, pretty
Speaker 3: good zoom kind of lens, and so it provides a
Speaker 3: really nice crisp image. And I have a You probably
Speaker 3: have a nice microphone, but I have a good Roady
Speaker 3: studio microphone as well. I just if you can't be
Speaker 3: there in person, it's nice to get as close as
Speaker 3: you can. Way better than the cameras we had on
Speaker 3: the Space station. They were pretty fuzzy and slow.
Speaker 1: Where did it all start? I mean that you are
Speaker 1: a unique person to achieve the things you've done, and
Speaker 1: to qualify for the things you've done, to be selected
Speaker 1: for the things you've done. I'm always intrigued in this,
Speaker 1: the genesis of genius and high achievement. Where does it start?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm no genius, but the genesis of the path
Speaker 3: of life that I followed. Well, obviously you know I'm
Speaker 3: the descendant of hundreds and hundreds of generations of folks
Speaker 3: who have chosen to explore instead of chosen to stay
Speaker 3: in one place. My great grandfather chose to leave his
Speaker 3: place of birth and travel to Canada and settle there,
Speaker 3: and he was hugely inspiring to me. My middle name
Speaker 3: is named for him, Austin, and then as a kid
Speaker 3: growing up, he was valued and revered. I knew him
Speaker 3: when I was little. One of my first memories is
Speaker 3: running through rain drops and my great grandfather, Austin hadfield
Speaker 3: in his Yorkshire acts, which I don't know how to do,
Speaker 3: but he said, you ran so fast, you ran between
Speaker 3: the rain drops. It's my first memory in life. And
Speaker 3: my dad was a pilot, and so aviation was always
Speaker 3: something nearby.
Speaker 2: At least I knew my dad flew. But what really got.
Speaker 3: My attention was the chance to not just fly in
Speaker 3: the atmosphere, but to fly in space. Watching television, you know,
Speaker 3: with Star Trek, watching two thousand and one, a space
Speaker 3: odyssey that was, you know, when I was eight years
Speaker 3: old or nine years old or something, and they were terrific,
Speaker 3: sort of like X Men or you know, Guardians of
Speaker 3: the Galaxy, sort of this great, fantastic, cool, inspiring but
Speaker 3: fake idea. But what really convinced me was that at
Speaker 3: the same time people were actually doing it. You know,
Speaker 3: Yuri Gagarin flew in space when I was just learning
Speaker 3: to walk, and then Al Shepherd flew just a month later,
Speaker 3: and then more and more people were flying in space.
Speaker 3: Valentino Tiroshkova went up and spent several days in space.
Speaker 3: And then there was this race to the Moon and
Speaker 3: the summer that I turned ten years old with Mike
Speaker 3: Collins orbiting, the little ship undocked from Mike and descended
Speaker 3: down and landed on the surface of the Moon with
Speaker 3: Neil Armstrong at the controls and Buzz Aldrin beside him,
Speaker 3: and I just thought, this is my fantasy, but it's
Speaker 3: a reality. This is an actual thing that people do
Speaker 3: now for the first time in all of history, this
Speaker 3: is happening. Well, I'm alive, and this is maybe.
Speaker 2: Something that I could do.
Speaker 3: And so to me, there couldn't have been anything more
Speaker 3: inspiring than that human achievement and the realization that that
Speaker 3: was open to me if I chose to pursue a
Speaker 3: life that would allow it to happen.
Speaker 2: And so yeah.
Speaker 3: That's where I got my inspiration from.
Speaker 1: So many questions from that little few sentences there. Firstly,
Speaker 1: did you make me al Armstrong?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah I did.
Speaker 3: I was lucky enough to serve as an astronaut for
Speaker 3: twenty one years, so I met everybody, all of the cosmonauts.
Speaker 3: We also have a professional society called the Association of
Speaker 3: Space Explorers, and if you've if you've been above one
Speaker 3: hundred kilometers from the surface, and especially if you've orbited
Speaker 3: the world at least once, you can join. And so
Speaker 3: I know everybody from all of the nations of the world.
Speaker 3: I was president of the Association of Space Explorer and
Speaker 3: so yeah, I met Neil a few times. And it's
Speaker 3: and Mike Collins and Buzz Buzz is still alive. And
Speaker 3: I know, but Buzz is in my phone. In fact,
Speaker 3: we could give Buzz a call. But uh uh, it's
Speaker 3: it's lovely to have a chance to meet the folks
Speaker 3: that were larger than life, that you you idolize, and
Speaker 3: to find out that they're just people and that they
Speaker 3: managed to do these things despite their imperfections and despite
Speaker 3: their humanness. Uh there there, they were just incredibly focused
Speaker 3: and capable people. And I found that very satisfying and
Speaker 3: enabling and humbling and and I honor their achievements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm digressing, But did you have a chance to
Speaker 1: speak to Mike Collins. Mike Collins at one stage the
Speaker 1: loneliest man in the in the universe universe, I suppose
Speaker 1: you'd call it that when when he's capsule is on
Speaker 1: the other side of the moon and he's got no
Speaker 1: communication with the rest of the world. Did you have
Speaker 1: a chance to talk to those I did issues with that.
Speaker 3: I didn't spend very much time with Mike, but I
Speaker 3: got to spend some time with him in Washington. Actually,
Speaker 3: it was during one of the people liked to notice that, Hey,
Speaker 3: it's been a round number since we did something, you know,
Speaker 3: it's been ten years, it's been twenty years, and it
Speaker 3: was one of the Apollo Landing anniversaries, and I was
Speaker 3: I think I went to.
Speaker 2: The White House that day.
Speaker 3: Anyway, it was just something in Washington, and Mike had
Speaker 3: gone on to head up the Smithsonian, that tremendous collection
Speaker 3: of museums in Washington, and I spent some time talking
Speaker 3: to him, and I'd read his book Carrying the Fire,
Speaker 3: which I think is still such an excellent capture of
Speaker 3: what it was like to do all those things, the
Speaker 3: type of mentality, his own views on it, the sardonic
Speaker 3: humor that he has, and I'd read his book a
Speaker 3: couple of times, and so it was just wonderful to
Speaker 3: meet him and get to know him and to thank
Speaker 3: him for taking the risks that he did so that
Speaker 3: it would enable someone like me to have the courage
Speaker 3: to give it a try myself.
Speaker 1: So you're this little kid watching Neil austrong Land on
Speaker 1: the moon and you're inspired to do it, But a
Speaker 1: billion other kids would have been inspired to the same.
Speaker 1: Why why you? Why were you ire to achieve that goal?
Speaker 3: In truth, I watched Neil and Buzz step onto the
Speaker 3: surface of the moon about one hundred yards from where
Speaker 3: I am right now. Oddly enough, we didn't have a
Speaker 3: television at the time, but our neighbor did, and so
Speaker 3: I went over to the neighbor's place and there was
Speaker 3: a living room packed with people and my brother and I,
Speaker 3: you know, I was nine, my brother was eleven, and
Speaker 3: we were, you know, on a on a sofa. We
Speaker 3: were like on the back of it up again, with
Speaker 3: our backs against the wall, watching it. And I couldn't believe.
Speaker 3: I guess I was just in awe struck wonder at
Speaker 3: what I was actually seeing, that this is this is possible.
Speaker 3: And I remember that same week going outside and standing
Speaker 3: on the shore and looking up at the moon in
Speaker 3: the sky and trying to link those two events in
Speaker 3: my mind, and a lot of people, as you say,
Speaker 3: it was the most viewed event in human history at
Speaker 3: that time, something like one third of everybody on Earth
Speaker 3: was following along with Neil and Buzz and Mike, you know,
Speaker 3: which is crazy, just because it was the embodiment of
Speaker 3: human dreams and we've been wondering about the Moon forever
Speaker 3: and a lot of people, I think dreamed about being
Speaker 3: an astronaut, or hoped to be an astronaut, or wanted
Speaker 3: to be an astronaut, and those are important first steps,
Speaker 3: but the actual critical step is to decide to be
Speaker 3: an astronaut, and that's an entirely different thing. I hope
Speaker 3: to be an Olympic athlete, but I've never decided to
Speaker 3: be one, and I'm never going to be one, because
Speaker 3: all I've got going is hope. But if I truly
Speaker 3: decided to be an athlete, even at this stage, then
Speaker 3: it's still possible. There are some Olympic events that don't
Speaker 3: require the fitness of an eighteen year old, you know.
Speaker 3: There are some that are just like hand eye skills, yeah,
Speaker 3: archery or something, and so it's not impossible. It's probably
Speaker 3: beyond my ability. But when I was nine, just turning ten,
Speaker 3: I thought, I'm going to grow up to be something.
Speaker 3: Why don't I grow up to be that? That's the
Speaker 3: coolest thing going on that I can possibly imagine.
Speaker 2: It.
Speaker 3: Even to think about it gets my heart going, So
Speaker 3: I want to do that. So then if I decide
Speaker 3: to be an astronaut, then I realize what DoD Neil
Speaker 3: and Mike and Buzz do that I don't know how
Speaker 3: to do yet, and I need to start learning how
Speaker 3: to do those things. So they they train underwater for spacewalks,
Speaker 3: I need to learn to swim. I need to learn
Speaker 3: to scuba dive. They understand orbital mechanics and control theory.
Speaker 3: I need to go to university and study something complicated,
Speaker 3: so I need to do well in middle school and
Speaker 3: high school. They fly in space, so I need to
Speaker 3: learn to fly. So as soon as I turned thirteen,
Speaker 3: I'm going to join the air Cadets and learn about
Speaker 3: meteorology and airmanship and then eventually learn to fly gliders
Speaker 3: and powered airplanes. And I never, I never once counted
Speaker 3: on being an astronaut, but I used the lure and
Speaker 3: the possibility of being an astronaut in order to help
Speaker 3: make all the little decisions of what I ought to
Speaker 3: do next in life. And I found it a wonderful help,
Speaker 3: because if you don't know what you're dreaming of being.
Speaker 3: Then how do you choose what to do next? Is
Speaker 3: your life just the titillation of your nerve endings or
Speaker 3: is there anything beyond that? And so I was lucky
Speaker 3: enough at that early age to be hugely inspired by
Speaker 3: what other people had done, enough to use it to
Speaker 3: then guide the decisions for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: Chris Headfeld is my guest today. He will be an
Speaker 1: Adelaine on July third, and I know we won't be
Speaker 1: able to completely satisfy your curiosity, but he will July
Speaker 1: the third at the Convention Center. Chris Hadfield's Journey to
Speaker 1: the Cosmos back shortly. Folks talking to Chris Hadfield on
Speaker 1: conversations today, if you just tuned in a legendary astronaut, author, musician,
Speaker 1: He'll be an Adelaide on July the third at the
Speaker 1: Convention Center. But if you just tuned in, he watched
Speaker 1: Lea Armstrong and buzzolden Land on the Moon, is inspired
Speaker 1: to be that and to do that, and decides to
Speaker 1: be an astronaut. But you must have been a smart kid,
Speaker 1: You must have been instinctively you know what I mean
Speaker 1: by that. We speak to these people who've got genius intellect,
Speaker 1: but they breezed through school. Did you breathe through school?
Speaker 3: I'm Canadian and I went to a good school system.
Speaker 3: I'm lucky to have grown up in a country with
Speaker 3: a good, pretty much universal school system. And what we
Speaker 3: did when I was about second grade, third grade, they
Speaker 3: tried to identify the kids that were doing really well
Speaker 3: in school and maybe allow them to advance a grade
Speaker 3: rather than spend one more year slogging through grade three
Speaker 3: or third grade or whatever. And so they allowed me
Speaker 3: to do grade three and four in one year. And
Speaker 3: they also went around to the schools where the kids
Speaker 3: were doing well, and they gave them aptitude tests and
Speaker 3: IQ tests and such. And they took even though I
Speaker 3: lived on a farm kind of out in the middle
Speaker 3: of nowhere, they thought, let's put together a thing, and
Speaker 3: they called it an enrichment program, sort of an experimental program.
Speaker 3: And this poor school bus driver had to drive to
Speaker 3: all of these remote addresses where the kids had done
Speaker 3: well on an IQ test and pick us up individually
Speaker 3: and drive us for two hours each day each way
Speaker 3: to get to this school where and now they got
Speaker 3: this room full of kids who can do well on
Speaker 3: an IQ test and We had the same teacher for
Speaker 3: multiple years, and we didn't study reading and writing and arithmetic.
Speaker 3: We did puzzles and we memorized Robert's service poems, and
Speaker 3: we played the stock market, and we went on field
Speaker 3: trips and it was pretty unusual education for grades five, six,
Speaker 3: and seven. And yeah, I never It wasn't until school
Speaker 3: got very complicated, you know, in postgraduate university that I
Speaker 3: really had to work hard. Most schooling came relatively straightforward
Speaker 3: to me, and so I didn't develop very good study habits.
Speaker 2: You know, if it.
Speaker 3: Comes easily, then you don't You don't really know how
Speaker 3: to build a brick wall if you don't know how
Speaker 3: to lay each individual brick along the way. And I
Speaker 3: really had to work hard when I got to mechanical
Speaker 3: engineering at university and realized I can't just intuitively fake
Speaker 3: this and pick it up. I've got to actually learn
Speaker 3: how to learn. And that really stood me in good stead.
Speaker 3: Then when I did postgraduate degrees and became a test pilot,
Speaker 3: which was one of the most academically complicated years of
Speaker 3: my life, and then the twenty one years I served
Speaker 3: as at ASTRONA. So yeah, to be an astronaut you
Speaker 3: need a healthy body. You need a good, active, curious mind,
Speaker 3: a burning desire, and then a work ethic that that
Speaker 3: will keep you happily motivated for decades.
Speaker 1: You do more than talk at these functions, don't you.
Speaker 1: You've got brniand audio visual obviously, photography is a passion
Speaker 1: of yours, and i'd imagine you do that. Well, you
Speaker 1: play guitar and see, yeah, which which we'll get to it,
Speaker 1: we'll get we'll get to that in a minute. But
Speaker 1: so all the way through you go and fly in
Speaker 1: the American the American Navy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was on exchange. I was posted as a
Speaker 3: military where posted to go fly on exchange with Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I was a test pilot with the United States
Speaker 3: Air Force and I did an exchange tour as a
Speaker 3: test pilot with the United States Navy, even though I
Speaker 3: was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force. And
Speaker 3: then after all that, I got selected by the Canadian
Speaker 3: Space Agency and then they posted me, uh detailed me
Speaker 3: maybe as right word to NASA, and I worked as
Speaker 3: a Canadian but within the NASA Astronaut Corps for twenty
Speaker 3: one years.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that your famous for accepting a Russian
Speaker 1: BOMBA when you're doing the no red vision did I did.
Speaker 3: Australia and Canada both fly F eighteens, and I was
Speaker 3: one of the very first Canadian F eighteen pilots. When
Speaker 3: the airplanes were just coming off the assembly line, I
Speaker 3: would get into an airplane that had seven hours on it,
Speaker 3: you know, the airplane had just done one acceptance flight,
Speaker 3: it had flown to Cold Lake, Alberta. And then I
Speaker 3: was climbing into fly it. So very lucky brand new airplanes.
Speaker 3: And the first deployment or role that I had with
Speaker 3: the Royal Canadian Air Force was as a combat fighter
Speaker 3: pilot during the Cold War, and at the time, the
Speaker 3: Soviets were practicing attacks on North America and they had
Speaker 3: these big heavy bombers that are called Bear bombers. They
Speaker 3: had various models of them, some for anti submarine but
Speaker 3: some of them were for releasing cruise missiles and they
Speaker 3: could carry fifteen or sixteen cruise missiles in the belly
Speaker 3: of these bombers. And so I would be sleeping in
Speaker 3: the quick reaction facility with my jet in the room
Speaker 3: next to me, plugged in and alive, and the horn
Speaker 3: would go off in the middle of the night. A
Speaker 3: big blaring clackson on the wall, and you would leap
Speaker 3: out of bed from sound to sleep, throw on your
Speaker 3: flight suit in your g suit, race climb up the ladder,
Speaker 3: jump into the airplane, be doing up your straps and
Speaker 3: starting the engine simultaneously to be airborne twelve minutes after
Speaker 3: the alarm had got off. You had to be airborne
Speaker 3: within twelve minutes. So you imagine tonight when you go
Speaker 3: to bed at three o'clock in the morning, if your
Speaker 3: fire alarm went and you had to be actually taking
Speaker 3: off the ground in your at eighteen twelve minutes after
Speaker 3: waking up, and then race out over the Atlantic and
Speaker 3: intercept the Soviet bombers before they could get to the
Speaker 3: line where.
Speaker 2: They could release their cruise missiles.
Speaker 3: And normally they were just like on their way down
Speaker 3: to Cuba, and they were just taking a shortcut through
Speaker 3: Canadian airspace, so normally it wasn't actually a big threat.
Speaker 3: But when the horn went off, you don't know, and
Speaker 3: you're a fully armed F eighteen with two heat seeking
Speaker 3: missiles and two radar seeking missiles and a nose full
Speaker 3: of bullets, and so it's deadly serious. And I did
Speaker 3: that eight different times. I did the very first intercept
Speaker 3: of Soviet bombers with at F eighteen, and it was fascinating, challenging, exciting, daunting,
Speaker 3: a little bit nerve wracking because it was the very
Speaker 3: first time, but this amazing feeling of getting closer and closer,
Speaker 3: coming up from behind, pulling up on the wingtip of
Speaker 3: this huge lumbering bomber with big counter rotating propellers, roaring.
Speaker 3: You could hear it through the glass of my cockpit
Speaker 3: and the and my my helmet itself, this big throbbing roar,
Speaker 3: this huge bomber, and trying to figure out why are
Speaker 3: they here today and what is their real purpose? And
Speaker 3: trying to look through the windows and see what there
Speaker 3: was up to.
Speaker 1: Did you speak can you speak to them? You know?
Speaker 2: Differenties.
Speaker 3: However, one of my intercepts was on Christmas Eve and
Speaker 3: we were scrambled on Christmas Eve, raced out over the Atlantic,
Speaker 3: flew on their wing, and as we peeled off, they
Speaker 3: were continuing south, and so we handed off to some
Speaker 3: American interceptors that were coming up. As we peeled off
Speaker 3: on our radio frequency, we heard many Christmas so like
Speaker 3: they knew what frequency they were on we were on,
Speaker 3: and I didn't speak Russia at the time. I since
Speaker 3: lived in Russia for about five years. I was NASA's
Speaker 3: director in Russia, and I a director of operations in
Speaker 3: Russia and I and I was the pilot of a
Speaker 3: Russian spaceship. So I learned to speak Russian reasonably well.
Speaker 2: But at the.
Speaker 3: Time I didn't, you know, I didn't speak any and
Speaker 3: so it was quite It made me laugh to hear
Speaker 3: Merry Christmas with a thick Russian accent over my radio frequency.
Speaker 1: Chris Hadfield is my guest, folks, legendary Canadian astronaut. He
Speaker 1: will be at the convention Center on Chris Hadfield's Journey
Speaker 1: to the Cosmos. Tickets at ticket Tech. I'm sure you'll
Speaker 1: be entertained. We'll be back shortly. Welcome back. Everybody's talking
Speaker 1: to Chris Hadfield on conversations today. He's a retired astronautic
Speaker 1: in space. He's worked in space, He's played guitar in space.
Speaker 1: He'll be at the Adelaide Convention Center on July the third.
Speaker 1: You get accepted into the obviously the astronaut program in
Speaker 1: the Canadian wonder how do you actually get the gig
Speaker 1: of commanding a space shuttle on a trip to the
Speaker 1: International Space Station. How does that work out? How do
Speaker 1: you do that?
Speaker 3: It's a long road ho for sure, and a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of luck needed, but mostly a lot
Speaker 3: of hard work when you well, when the application process
Speaker 3: went out in Canada, coast to coast, there were five
Speaker 3: three hundred and thirty people applied and we didn't know
Speaker 3: how many they would they would accept, and it was
Speaker 3: going to be a six month selection process. But I
Speaker 3: went through each of the wickets and it was nerve wracking,
Speaker 3: but eventually they chose four of us out of.
Speaker 2: Fifty three hundred and.
Speaker 3: So of the four of us, I was immediately sent
Speaker 3: down to start training with NASA because I had an
Speaker 3: international operational flying background. And then I started training with
Speaker 3: NASA and had a year of astronaut candidate training. It's
Speaker 3: just sort of the basics. You know, orbital mechanics, how
Speaker 3: space shuttles work, how space stations work, how all of
Speaker 3: these things, the fundamental skills that you need. And then
Speaker 3: once you've graduated from the astronaut candidate phase, then you
Speaker 3: are eligible to start doing various work within the office
Speaker 3: and your eligible for flight assignment. And I worked various jobs.
Speaker 3: I worked at in Florida getting Cruise ready to launch
Speaker 3: and welcoming Cruise when they came back. But eventually I
Speaker 3: got called into the Chief Astronaut's office and in the
Speaker 3: corner of the building that the astronaut program is in
Speaker 3: and telling me that I'd been selected for a Space
Speaker 3: Shuttle flight and we were going to go help build
Speaker 3: the Russian space station Mir.
Speaker 2: And so now.
Speaker 3: There's well, I forget what it was sixteen months of
Speaker 3: intense training seven days a week for the next sixteen
Speaker 3: months to get ready to go and help build Mir,
Speaker 3: their space station. So there I am going to be
Speaker 3: operating the Canadian arm to attach on board the American
Speaker 3: Shuttle to attach a huge new Russian section to the
Speaker 3: Russian space station Mir, and on all the training that
Speaker 3: goes along with that, studying Russian language, I'm traveling to
Speaker 3: rush to understand the crop, complex docking systems, just endless,
Speaker 3: endless work, all focused on the November day when we're
Speaker 3: going to be on board Space Shuttle Atlantis and launch.
Speaker 2: So it's and it.
Speaker 3: Is both a tremendously long slog of training and education,
Speaker 3: multiple university degrees and languages and theory and complexity completely
Speaker 3: unrecognized and unheralded, but all focusing on this incredible graduation
Speaker 3: day when the engines of Space Shuttle Avantis are going
Speaker 3: to light below you and take you on the greatest
Speaker 3: adventure that you can imagine. So that process, those little
Speaker 3: watershed days when when you're selected as an astronaut or
Speaker 3: when you're assigned to a spaceflight, each of those has
Speaker 3: to be taken as a huge reward on the path
Speaker 3: to the ultimate dream of a boy like me to
Speaker 3: fly in space.
Speaker 1: So two of the car it's two of your quotes
Speaker 1: that I've heard that fascinate me. The Shuttle is the
Speaker 1: most complicated flying machine ever built. I hadn't thought about that,
Speaker 1: you know, I would have thought that, you know, the
Speaker 1: Moon module would. So can you give me a brief
Speaker 1: appreciation space a Space Shuttle, and then I'll get to
Speaker 1: the second quote.
Speaker 3: Sure, the Space Shuttle launched as a rocket ship, and
Speaker 3: then it flew as its own space station, and it
Speaker 3: could stay in space for almost three weeks as sort
Speaker 3: of an independent, self contained, self powered space station. And
Speaker 3: then at the end of all that, that same machine
Speaker 3: that launched as a rocket, that flew as a space station,
Speaker 3: you know, turned it around, slowed it down, and you
Speaker 3: flew it as an airplane back to land on a
Speaker 3: runway with like tires on a runway. And it was
Speaker 3: really primitive technology because it was designed in the late
Speaker 3: sixties and early seventies. So the computers, the main general
Speaker 3: purpose computers that controlled the Space Shuttle, had one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty eight K of memory k not megabytes, but kilobytes,
Speaker 3: this little, tiny, primitive old computer. But that's the best
Speaker 3: they had at the time when they locked in the
Speaker 3: design of the Space Shuttle, So that meant the cockpit
Speaker 3: was incredibly manual. There were about five hundred switches in
Speaker 3: the cockpit of the shuttle, and the combination of failures
Speaker 3: that could cause a shuttle to not make it successfully
Speaker 3: to orbit was staggering. And to be able to successfully
Speaker 3: fly the shuttle and take it through launch and then
Speaker 3: rendezvous and docking and then undocking and then deorbit and
Speaker 3: landing was such a myriad of skill sets and to
Speaker 3: be part of the crew that the flight crew took
Speaker 3: four people to fly it. The commander is the only
Speaker 3: one with hands of the controls, but four people to
Speaker 3: keep track of all those systems for all the things
Speaker 3: it could inevitably at any time go wrong.
Speaker 1: I'll be lates to the second qualit with the prospect
Speaker 1: of going up in a spice shuttle, You're no, You're
Speaker 1: going to be either floating gloriously in spice within minutes
Speaker 1: or you'll be dead within minutes. Should be all the
Speaker 1: floating gloriously in spice or you'll be dead. It's pretty yeah,
Speaker 1: traumatic thought to contemplate.
Speaker 3: It's true, Parnsey, But everything worth doing in life has risk, everything,
Speaker 3: and you just have to decide what risks are worth taking.
Speaker 3: And you do it often unconsciously, like how am I
Speaker 3: going to get to work today? Or what am I
Speaker 3: going to do this weekend? Or should on vacation? Should
Speaker 3: I go bungee jumping? Or should I get married or
Speaker 3: should I whatever? Everything worth doing in life has risk,
Speaker 3: and you need to decide if something is worth taking
Speaker 3: a risk for, then how am I going to try
Speaker 3: and minimize the risk. And I decided when I was
Speaker 3: nine years old that exploring the universe was worth taking
Speaker 3: a risk for, and so that changed everything for me.
Speaker 3: My job is not to worry and to rub my
Speaker 3: rabbit's foot, or to pray or whatever, or to shiver,
Speaker 3: but my job is now now that I've decided this
Speaker 3: is a risk worth taking. My job is to change
Speaker 3: who I am so that my skill set is as
Speaker 3: high as I could make it, so I can be
Speaker 3: part of the team of people that's going to succeed
Speaker 3: at this thing. And you recognize that what you're doing
Speaker 3: is risky. But I used to be a test pilot,
Speaker 3: where people die on a regular basis. We need test
Speaker 3: pilots in society. But there are professions where we just
Speaker 3: sort of expect people to die, like soldiers or police
Speaker 3: officers or firefighters. You know, it's tragic, but there are
Speaker 3: some jobs that have the service, jobs that have risk,
Speaker 3: and astronauts one of those. But I just thought, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm going to die eventually, you know, get over it.
Speaker 3: That's okay. But it's the life that I lead that
Speaker 3: really matters. And this is really important to me. This
Speaker 3: is a risk worth taking. I'm going to work for
Speaker 3: decades in order to be part of a group of
Speaker 3: people that hopefully can beat the odds and actually safely
Speaker 3: get to space and the.
Speaker 2: Odds of dying.
Speaker 3: That day in November on my first space flight, we're
Speaker 3: one in thirty eight of dying in the first nine
Speaker 3: minutes of that flight, one in thirty next time in
Speaker 3: your crowd of people, and you look around at thirty
Speaker 3: eight people and think, you know, one of us is
Speaker 3: going to die today if we choose to do these things.
Speaker 2: Would you do that thing? Would you?
Speaker 3: You know? And so it was an intriguing set of odds.
Speaker 3: But we were good qualified people, and the folks that
Speaker 3: built the machine did a nice job, and we safely
Speaker 3: got to space and back and it was absolutely worth
Speaker 3: taking the risk. But I think it's important not to
Speaker 3: fool yourself there. We're going to be floating effortlessly in
Speaker 3: space or we're going to be dead. But either way,
Speaker 3: this is a risk I'm willing to take, and my
Speaker 3: job is way more important than just being afraid.
Speaker 1: Chris Hadfield is my guest folks. Retired astronaut, but he
Speaker 1: does all sorts of things. He's an amazing speaker. I've
Speaker 1: listened to some of the talks that he's done. He'll
Speaker 1: be here on July the third at the convention Center.
Speaker 1: You can get your tickets through Ticketech. Chris Hadfield's Guide
Speaker 1: to the Cosmos. We'll get him into the space station.
Speaker 1: We're getting walking in space, we're getting blind in space,
Speaker 1: not with alcohol, but with vision back shortly talking to
Speaker 1: Chris Hadfield on Conversations Today. If you just tuned in,
Speaker 1: you need to go back and listen to the start
Speaker 1: on the podcast. He's an astronaut, he's flying space shuttles.
Speaker 1: He's a commander of a space miss he goes to
Speaker 1: the International Space Station. What's it like living? I mean,
Speaker 1: you're up there for two or three months. I mean
Speaker 1: some have been there a lot longer, but you're up
Speaker 1: You're a commander of a mission in the International Space
Speaker 1: Station and you're there for two or three months. Things
Speaker 1: like weightlessness, I'm fascinated by that. Do you how do
Speaker 1: you adjusted that? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I was there for almost six months, so around the
Speaker 3: world two thousand, six hundred and fifty times, and as
Speaker 3: you say, weightless for every second of that. Weightlessness is
Speaker 3: the most joyful, liberating, hilarious change of rules.
Speaker 2: That you could imagine.
Speaker 3: Imagine in the studio where you're sitting right now, if
Speaker 3: suddenly you could fly, you could just effortlessly, with the
Speaker 3: tiniest push of.
Speaker 2: Your finger fly around the room and it never ended.
Speaker 3: Or if you wanted to go outside, you just you know,
Speaker 3: push yourself through the door and soar out, you know,
Speaker 3: out into the emptiness of everything. It's it's spectacular. It
Speaker 3: is so much fun. It's easier than a bird. The
Speaker 3: bird has to flapping its wings. You are now a
Speaker 3: superhero who has a super power and you can fly.
Speaker 3: And I marveled at it and played with it and
Speaker 3: celebrated it for the every second of the almost six
Speaker 3: months that I was living on board the spaceship. But
Speaker 3: it's not just the weightlessness, Qurnzy. It is that you
Speaker 3: are going around the world every ninety minutes, so the
Speaker 3: whole world is pouring by underneath you, and it doesn't
Speaker 3: look like a map. It looks like this gorgeous Christmas
Speaker 3: ornament of color and texture. And the angle between you
Speaker 3: and the sun and the Earth is constantly changing because
Speaker 3: of your speed, So the shadows are moving and the
Speaker 3: textures are being revealed, and so there's this mesmerizingly gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Spectacle out the window.
Speaker 3: And you're part of Out of the eight billion people
Speaker 3: that are alive, there are just maybe three or six
Speaker 3: of you that are actually in a position to experiences
Speaker 3: right now. So the feeling of just wonder and privilege
Speaker 3: and rarity of the event is with you all the time,
Speaker 3: and you know, you're running two hundred experiments and fixing
Speaker 3: the toilet and occasionally doing spacewalks, and you know, living your.
Speaker 2: Life up there.
Speaker 3: But at no point did I take it for granted,
Speaker 3: nor did I lose sight of the amazing good fortune
Speaker 3: that I had to be one of the crew on
Speaker 3: board the International Space Station, even when I was the commander.
Speaker 1: Like, so I'm going to take you back to Earth now,
Speaker 1: but I'm coming back to this by shuttle. What's it
Speaker 1: like when you have to experience gravity after having six
Speaker 1: months of witlessness.
Speaker 3: It's so criminally unfair, Like it's just it was, it's
Speaker 3: so weird, Like you get so used to weightlessness because
Speaker 3: it's effortless. Your heart shrinks and your you know, you
Speaker 3: can fly and you never have to lift a finger,
Speaker 3: you don't have to your head up. You know, it's
Speaker 3: just so wonderful and liberating. And now suddenly this invisible
Speaker 3: oppressor is literally grinding you into the ground. It's trying
Speaker 3: to crush you under this unseen heel, and it's just
Speaker 3: like you have to lift your arm up. I even
Speaker 3: noticed as soon as I get back, I'd forgotten that
Speaker 3: my tongue has weight and I started to talk and
Speaker 3: I'm like, how was going on? This feels weird because
Speaker 3: my lips and tongue I'd forgotten I'd had a weightless
Speaker 3: tongue for six months.
Speaker 2: And it's just it just seems so.
Speaker 3: Like, why are all these people putting up with this?
Speaker 3: Why are we taking this like sheep? You know you
Speaker 3: could be weightless, and yet here we are letting this,
Speaker 3: this invisible force drive us into the dirt. And it's
Speaker 3: actually quite nauseating because your balance system isn't used to it.
Speaker 3: And even though you're strong because you've been working out
Speaker 3: two hours every day, your skeleton has gotten weaker because
Speaker 3: it wasn't fighting gravity every day. And so I'd lost
Speaker 3: about eight percent of my skeleton and my hips and
Speaker 3: my upper femur, my upper bone, and my legs. So
Speaker 3: I had osteoporosis. So I had a great risk of
Speaker 3: breaking my hip if I fell. Actually, two of my
Speaker 3: astronaut friends have fallen within a few weeks of landing
Speaker 3: and broken their hip just because the bones are more fragile.
Speaker 3: So you have to be careful when you get back,
Speaker 3: and you can recover from all those things. It takes
Speaker 3: a while, but it is imminently worth the experience regardless,
Speaker 3: and if you have to do a little rehab at
Speaker 3: the end, so what, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Speaker 1: If find us for playing music in space, people can
Speaker 1: go to YouTube and see Chris head Through playing David
Speaker 1: Bowie's Space Ondity. The complication of playing guitar. It didn't
Speaker 1: sound as simple as it sounds. What intrigues me? How
Speaker 1: did you get that old caistral banking to it?
Speaker 3: Well, I've always been a musician, and I played trombone
Speaker 3: and elementary.
Speaker 2: And high schoo and university.
Speaker 3: But guitar is a wonderful instrument because it's so portable
Speaker 3: and you can make a lot of sound with the guitar.
Speaker 3: And there's a guitar permanently on the space station. It
Speaker 3: was put there by the NASA psychiatrists because art is
Speaker 3: important for mental health and music is important. It predates history,
Speaker 3: so it's wonderful to have the guitar up there, and
Speaker 3: there's always at least one astronaut plays a little bit
Speaker 3: of guitar. But I decided, at other people's sort of prompting,
Speaker 3: to try and do a version of Space Oddity, which
Speaker 3: is a complicated song, and Bowie was just a legend of.
Speaker 2: A music creator and an artist.
Speaker 3: But I did a vocal track, and then I loved
Speaker 3: the prescience or the vision that Bowie had had of
Speaker 3: what it was going to feel like to fly in space.
Speaker 3: He wrote that song before We walked in the Moon,
Speaker 3: when he was just like nineteen or twenty years old.
Speaker 3: And yet when I sang it in space as he'd
Speaker 3: been there, and that's what really convinced me when I
Speaker 3: listened to my own sort of karaoke track of singing
Speaker 3: along with David, and then I put the guitar music underneath.
Speaker 3: And as you say, playing guitar is weird without gravity,
Speaker 3: because there's nothing to hold the guitar in front of you.
Speaker 3: It's not hanging from a strap.
Speaker 2: It's not being.
Speaker 3: Pushed onto your leg by gravity and with your left hand.
Speaker 3: For the guitar players, when you move on up and
Speaker 3: down the frontboard, the guitar just moves left or right
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: There's nothing.
Speaker 3: So if you watch me in those videos playing guitar,
Speaker 3: I have it pinched under my bicep to hold it
Speaker 3: so that the guitar has some stability so I can
Speaker 3: play it and then once I had I just use
Speaker 3: garage band on an iPad to get a click track
Speaker 3: and get enough. And then once I had that, then
Speaker 3: I sent it to some friends on Earth and they
Speaker 3: they put other instrumental instrumentals in with it, just to
Speaker 3: fill it out as a full song. But it's my
Speaker 3: voice and my guitar work, and then my my band
Speaker 3: back on Earth. And and then I floated around one
Speaker 3: day singing along with myself one a couple hours on
Speaker 3: a Saturday when when I had a little bit of
Speaker 3: free time, and uh and made that video. My son
Speaker 3: actually made that video, and I'm just you know, it
Speaker 3: was just sort of a father son project with some
Speaker 3: of my musician friends. And and hundreds of millions of
Speaker 3: people have seen that video because I think it allows
Speaker 3: them to maybe more intuitively see what it's actually like
Speaker 3: to live on board of spaceship.
Speaker 1: I don't think we can ever get that feeling. It's
Speaker 1: like when you walk in space. I mean you've walked
Speaker 1: in space, or you've floated in space. The link, the
Speaker 1: tiny link to the station and it's so fragile you
Speaker 1: could be floating away. I mean, did that thought ever
Speaker 1: question money? You you went blind? You you were blinded temporarily.
Speaker 1: And when you're on your space walk, I know you
Speaker 1: try it, but Dan and saw it was there a field.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, Cornsy, I had contamination inside my suit. But
Speaker 3: imagine with you sitting there right now, if you've got
Speaker 3: something in your left eye, and you know how, like
Speaker 3: a bug flew into your left eye, and you know
Speaker 3: how it feels. Your eye just suddenly it's the most
Speaker 3: important part of your body because it hurts so much.
Speaker 3: The eyes are such valuable sensors in our body that
Speaker 3: they have a lot of pain receptors in them because
Speaker 3: your body wants you to protect your eyes. But if
Speaker 3: one of them suddenly is malfunctioning and hurt, then it
Speaker 3: shuts and it tears up like crazy because your body's
Speaker 3: trying to flush the bug out of there with tears.
Speaker 3: But without gravity, the tears don't fall, the tears don't drain,
Speaker 3: they just get bigger and bigger. So now you have
Speaker 3: this bigger and bigger ball of contaminated tear or buggy
Speaker 3: tear on your eye. And it actually crossed the bridge
Speaker 3: of my nose and goosed across into my other eye,
Speaker 3: and then both my eyes were blinded. And so there
Speaker 3: I was like, if it happened while you were sitting
Speaker 3: at your desk, you know, you'd be annoyed and you'd
Speaker 3: be trying to find a tissue and trying to wipe
Speaker 3: your eyes and maybe calling for somebody to help you
Speaker 3: or whatever. But I was out on a spacewalk and
Speaker 3: I couldn't even rub my eyes because they were inside
Speaker 3: my helmet, and so what do you do? So I
Speaker 3: called down a mission control and told them that something
Speaker 3: contamination had blinded both my eyes. But I wasn't I
Speaker 3: was more irritated than anything, because every time you blink,
Speaker 3: you're blinded, and you don't suddenly die. You know, you
Speaker 3: can close your eyes for a few seconds and everything
Speaker 3: doesn't go away. You know, it's just you have four
Speaker 3: other senses. So being realistic, it's like, yeah, okay, I
Speaker 3: can't see, but there's a pretty good chance I'm going
Speaker 3: to see again as soon as I get this guck
Speaker 3: out of my eyes, whatever it is. But there was
Speaker 3: no nice way to get it out of my eyes,
Speaker 3: And what I ended up doing was opening this one
Speaker 3: way valve on my neck, a little bit like a
Speaker 3: Frankenstein bolt on the side of my neck. I open
Speaker 3: up this valve, and that actually let the contaminated air
Speaker 3: flow out of my helmet into space while the new, clean, fresh,
Speaker 3: dry oxygen float in behind my head, up across my head,
Speaker 3: down across my eyes to help evaporate the contaminated tears
Speaker 3: and then float out to space. It was a very
Speaker 3: weird feeling listening to as my oxygen, my little oxygen
Speaker 3: tank is trying to repressurize the entire universe. But eventually
Speaker 3: my eyes it was still blurry, but I could see
Speaker 3: well enough, and I closed the valve and got back
Speaker 3: to work, and it turned out it was just the
Speaker 3: anti fog, the mixture of m oil and soap that
Speaker 3: we used to keep the visor from fogging up. But
Speaker 3: if you put oil and soap in your eye, you know,
Speaker 3: it hurts and your eyes can't see. And we actually
Speaker 3: changed to Johnson's No More Tears, which we probably should
Speaker 3: have used right from the beginning.
Speaker 2: But the rest of.
Speaker 3: The spacewalk, though, and your eyes are your greatest sense
Speaker 3: to see where you are. You can't taste it, you
Speaker 3: can't touch it. You know, you can't really hear space.
Speaker 3: I mean, the main sense that is letting you know
Speaker 3: where you are is the incredible spectrale. That's spectacle that's
Speaker 3: pouring in through your eyes. And while I was south
Speaker 3: of Australia in the nighttime, just a little south of Tasmania,
Speaker 3: we went through the Southern Lights while I was outside
Speaker 3: of my spacewalk, and I had the lights shut off
Speaker 3: at the time, so I actually got to see the
Speaker 3: amazing and almost unprecedented human spectacle of surfing through the
Speaker 3: aurora of the world, of having it poor past me
Speaker 3: in the spaceship while I was outside. It's just unbelievably
Speaker 3: gorgeous and otherworldly.
Speaker 2: And yet this is me. You know this, This is
Speaker 2: actually happening to me right now. I can see this.
Speaker 3: And how am I going to incorporate this with the
Speaker 3: rest of my life? How am I going to this
Speaker 3: brief moment in time. How am I going to capture
Speaker 3: this properly so that later, you know, when I have
Speaker 3: a chance to really think about all the events of
Speaker 3: my life, I can somehow put it into context.
Speaker 2: And I still marvel at it.
Speaker 1: I read where you said if you were offered the
Speaker 1: opportunity to take a mission to Mars, you would jump
Speaker 1: at that opportunity, even if the chances of coming back,
Speaker 1: returning back to Earth with zero Do you still believe that?
Speaker 1: Would you still do that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure?
Speaker 3: I mean is it really that important where you spend
Speaker 3: the last day of your life? I mean, I find
Speaker 3: it way more important to think about where what I
Speaker 3: have a chance to accomplish in my life.
Speaker 2: And obviously, you know.
Speaker 3: I need to think of family, and I wouldn't want
Speaker 3: to go and never see my wife, or my kids
Speaker 3: or my new grandchildren ever again, and so I need
Speaker 3: to think about that. But the opportunity to do something
Speaker 3: right on the edge of human capability and the edge
Speaker 3: of human experience, and that isn't just a stunt where
Speaker 3: you know, you're just doing something that just to you know,
Speaker 3: get likes on the Internet, but where you're actually pushing
Speaker 3: the edge of what is possible and opening a door
Speaker 3: that can never be closed again that other people will
Speaker 3: be able to follow through and they will eventually get
Speaker 3: to the point where they can take it for granted,
Speaker 3: like the magic of flying an airplane, where you don't
Speaker 3: even think about how crazy and magical it is, and
Speaker 3: yet thousands of people flying in air every day, and
Speaker 3: so to be on the avant garde of that and
Speaker 3: to be inventing and helping to improve the machines that
Speaker 3: allow us to do it, to the discovery of all
Speaker 3: the things you're going to have to find to make
Speaker 3: it possible, and then the wonder of somehow managing to
Speaker 3: land in a place that humans have never been before,
Speaker 3: and then to start setting up the basic existence that
Speaker 3: is going to be a human settlement somewhere besides our
Speaker 3: own planet. We've been doing it on the space station
Speaker 3: for the last twenty five years, and we're right in
Speaker 3: the cusp now. I'm not just exploring the Moon, but
Speaker 3: starting to settle the Moon. A couple of four of
Speaker 3: my friends are going to the Moon next in February probably,
Speaker 3: and the Chinese have said categorically they'll be walking in
Speaker 3: the Moon by twenty thirty.
Speaker 2: So that's happening right now. And Mars. It's still a
Speaker 2: lot further.
Speaker 3: Away than most people think, but Mars is within our
Speaker 3: capability right now.
Speaker 2: We need to make.
Speaker 3: Better spaceships at better engines so that we don't kill
Speaker 3: everybody every time. We've never been closer.
Speaker 1: There's so many questions I answered. Hopefully Chris can answer
Speaker 1: them for you. On July the third, Chris Hadfield's Journey
Speaker 1: to the Cosmos July the third at the convention set
Speaker 1: up such a great chat, Chris, Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me.
Speaker 2: ANSI I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: It's a real pleasure to spend a little time with you,
Speaker 3: and I am greatly looking forward to being Adelaide on
Speaker 3: July third and talking to everybody there and answering questions
Speaker 3: with the audience and playing some music and showing some
Speaker 3: images that'll take your breathway.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a fun night. Thank you, sir.
Speaker 1: Thanks Chris, Chris Hadfield, Thank you folks for joining us.