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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George nor

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Speaker 1: with you. Along with Colonel Chris Hadfield, served as commander

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Speaker 1: on the International Space Station. Chris, I get the edgy

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Speaker 1: in a plane after two hours. How could you folks

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Speaker 1: spend so much time up there in the International Space Station?

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Speaker 1: Don't you get claustrophobic? Well, it's a busy place, George.

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Speaker 1: We're not passengers on board, so we're running about two

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Speaker 1: hundred experiments constantly. And it's a big, complicated ship, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's like a it's like a huge destroyer or cruise

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Speaker 1: liner or something that can never come into port for

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Speaker 1: thirty years. That's right. We have to do all of

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Speaker 1: the maintenance and fixing while we're there, and so they

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Speaker 1: actually have an electronic schedule for us that tells us

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Speaker 1: what we're doing every five minutes for the whole six

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Speaker 1: months that you're up there, down to while it splits.

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Speaker 1: So it's it's a hugely demanding and busy life. And

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Speaker 1: what you're really looking for is a little bit of

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Speaker 1: time off to take pictures out the window, or or

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Speaker 1: write music or or or think about where you are.

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Speaker 1: And speaking of music, I understand you're quite an accomplished

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Speaker 1: musician yourself. There's a guitar up on the space station

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Speaker 1: that was put there by the actually by the NASA

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Speaker 1: psychiatrist because music and arts are are so important just

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Speaker 1: for mental health. People need music. And and so I

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Speaker 1: I played. I've played in bands my whole life, and

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Speaker 1: and and fronted bands, and I wrote the whole album

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Speaker 1: of music on the space station that's done well. And

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Speaker 1: did a cover of a Bowie tune that that lots

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Speaker 1: and lots of people have seen. That guitar gets gets

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Speaker 1: played quite a bit up there, and uh, and it's

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Speaker 1: a really nice way to kind of explain explain things

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Speaker 1: to yourself, you know, to float witless blay a huge window,

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Speaker 1: playing guitar and uh and watching the world role by silently.

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Speaker 1: It's an amazing personal experience as amazing. As a matter

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Speaker 1: of fact, I've got a little clip of you singing

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Speaker 1: space oddity up there on the International Space Station. Ground

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Speaker 1: control to may Ja Tom, Ground control to me Ja Tom,

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Speaker 1: lock your so US hatch and put your helmet on.

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Speaker 1: Ground control to may Ja Tom, commencing countdown engines on

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Speaker 1: to detach from the station and make uds love me

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Speaker 1: with you. This is crowd control. To Major Tom, you

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Speaker 1: really made the gray and the papers want to know

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Speaker 1: who shirts you wear. But it's time to guide the

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Speaker 1: capsule if you dare. He did a great job with that,

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Speaker 1: Chris super and that of course, when Bowie did that,

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Speaker 1: Major Tom was an astronaut who basically hid his life.

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Speaker 1: He pretended that he died or something. Then he came

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Speaker 1: back when he did the other song, Ashes to Ashes. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you know, Bowie wrote that song back even before Apollo eleven,

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Speaker 1: before the first moon landing in sixteen, he wrote that

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Speaker 1: song We Forget Now. He was like nineteen, you know,

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Speaker 1: twenty years Yeah, what a talent. He was just a kid,

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Speaker 1: and he really loved that version that I did up

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Speaker 1: on this space. What did your crewmembers think in space

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Speaker 1: when you when you, oh, I just did it by myself.

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Speaker 1: You don't want to bug other people. Uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: everyone's got very little spare time on a spaceship, and

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Speaker 1: so you don't want to demand any time of others.

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Speaker 1: So I just recorded that on my own while I

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Speaker 1: was up there and floated around for an hour one

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Speaker 1: Saturday afternoon and made the video that went with it.

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Speaker 1: And but it's nice because hundreds of millions of people

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Speaker 1: have seen that video and and maybe get a little

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Speaker 1: better sense what it's actually like to live and work

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Speaker 1: and be a human being on board a spaceship While

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Speaker 1: you were up there, did you ever have that feeling?

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Speaker 1: Let's just go to the moon. We're so close. I

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Speaker 1: feel that way every day on Earth, George. It's only

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Speaker 1: three days away, you know. And I head up a

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Speaker 1: space foundation called open Luner that's working at cheap ways

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Speaker 1: to get to the surface of the Moon, and uh,

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Speaker 1: and take advantage of all the technology we've built. There's

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Speaker 1: all sorts of people headed that way right now. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: we think about that. On the space ship. You just

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Speaker 1: have to go faster the speed you go to stay

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Speaker 1: in orbit, which is about five miles per second. If

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Speaker 1: you can just increase by a couple miles per second,

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Speaker 1: then then you're fast enough to go to the moon.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, it'd be nice to fire the engines

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Speaker 1: and go. Chris, are you specifically spiritual or religious? Were

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Speaker 1: you then? Are you now? Did it enhance anything there?

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Speaker 1: I think the space no matter what what. Yeah, I'm spiritual.

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Speaker 1: I'm not particularly religious, but you don't get to be

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Speaker 1: an astronaut without some sort of sense of personal convictions.

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Speaker 1: And to see the world that way is immensely thought provoking.

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Speaker 1: Uh you know, to not just down here in one

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Speaker 1: little tiny spot on the surface, but to be able

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Speaker 1: to see the whole thing in ninety minutes, and then

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Speaker 1: again the next ninety minutes, and then again the next

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Speaker 1: ninety minutes. It's it puts it in a real accurate perspective.

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Speaker 1: And then it also shows the rarity of it and

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Speaker 1: the unique jewel like beauty of it. And so we

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Speaker 1: I mean, we have all the religions, all the major

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Speaker 1: religions of the world on the spaceship, from all the

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Speaker 1: different crews from around the planets, to talk about it

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Speaker 1: all the time, and I think it reinforces whatever whatever

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Speaker 1: belief system you have to fly in space. I think

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Speaker 1: it gets it gets deepened by by seeing the world

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Speaker 1: for what it actually is. It it tends to whatever

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Speaker 1: convictions you had that allowed you to do these things

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Speaker 1: to get there, they get reaffirmed by by the amazing

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Speaker 1: variants of seeing the world from a spaceship. Do you

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Speaker 1: do you think when people are trying to talk about

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Speaker 1: the big Bang theory and how things happened? Do you

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Speaker 1: do a lot of thinking up there about that? Like

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Speaker 1: how did this universe start? Oh? I think about that

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Speaker 1: all the time, and no one knows the answer to that.

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Speaker 1: There's lots of people thinking about it. Our best physicists

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Speaker 1: have theories that are getting more and more proven, but

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Speaker 1: none of them are complete, and the big questions are

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Speaker 1: still always begged and left open. You know, what was

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Speaker 1: there before the Big Bang? And and can you create

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Speaker 1: something out of nothing? And what is the what is

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Speaker 1: the endgame for all this? Those questions are huge and

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Speaker 1: we understand them, I think now better than we ever have,

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Speaker 1: but we sure don't have the definitive answered any of

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Speaker 1: those things. But he mounted on top of the space

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Speaker 1: station right now is a huge experiment that the guys

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Speaker 1: were doing spacewalks to get fixed this week, or the

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Speaker 1: Alpha magnetic spectrometer, just trying to understand what the universe

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Speaker 1: is even made of. We can only account for six

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Speaker 1: percent of what the universe is made of. We call

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Speaker 1: the rest of it dark matter and dark energy, but

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Speaker 1: we really don't even know what that is. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: we're just we're just kind of, you know, a little

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Speaker 1: toddlers just starting to step away from Mother Earth and

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out what's going on. Space station is

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Speaker 1: a great place to do that. Chris had feeling with

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Speaker 1: us with his book and Astronauts, A Guide to Life

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Speaker 1: on Earth. Were you aboard the ISS when they had

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Speaker 1: that little leak or something? Where did a cosmonaut have

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Speaker 1: to put some gum in there to kind of stop

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Speaker 1: it or something? Yeah, the Russians haven't come completely clean

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Speaker 1: with the story of what happened there, but it really

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Speaker 1: looks like it was a manufacturing error, you know, someone

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Speaker 1: It looks like it was someone inadvertently punched a little

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Speaker 1: hole and then sealed the hole and a little bit

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Speaker 1: of sealing came loose while they were on orbit. A

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Speaker 1: lot of people want to make a huge deal of it,

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Speaker 1: but but I mean, every little every piece of the

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Speaker 1: space station was built by somebody, and it's nothing's perfect.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you don't want a Monday or a Friday

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Speaker 1: car right, you want a Wednesday exactly space station. We

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Speaker 1: do our very best to make everything perfect, but but

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Speaker 1: nothing's ever perfect. And yeah, a crew a little over

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Speaker 1: a year ago they had a tiny, tiny leak that

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Speaker 1: was detected and they found there was a little tiny

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Speaker 1: hole in the wall of the Sayers and they plugged it.

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Speaker 1: We get you know, we get hit by meteorites all

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Speaker 1: the time, and see you always have to be able

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Speaker 1: to react to some sort of leak. Fortunately they don't

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Speaker 1: punch a hole on any regular basis. But we have

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Speaker 1: all the equipment on board, as you say, sort of

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Speaker 1: like gum big goops of bondoug leak just in case

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Speaker 1: that ever happened at a catastrophic level. If there were

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Speaker 1: a coronal mass ejection heading your way, a big X flare,

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Speaker 1: do you have a place where you could hide within

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Speaker 1: the iss to kind of insulate yourself. Yeah. The Sun

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Speaker 1: chorus says, you know, ejects huge amounts of energy on

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Speaker 1: a regular basis, And as you say, a coronal mass

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Speaker 1: ejection is like a big burp coming out of the Sun,

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Speaker 1: and normally they're going some direction besides the Earth, but

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Speaker 1: occasionally one of them comes and envelops the Earth, like

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Speaker 1: the Carrington event in the mid eighteen If we had

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Speaker 1: one of those now, it would do tremendous damn oh god,

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Speaker 1: you and I wouldn't be talking on the air. It

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Speaker 1: would shut down our phones. It would be huge, and

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Speaker 1: it would be very life threatening, not only to the

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Speaker 1: satellites in orbit, but of course to the six people

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Speaker 1: up there. And so one of the things we need

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Speaker 1: to think about on the surface of the Earth is

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Speaker 1: radiation protecting all the stuff that's valuable to us, but

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Speaker 1: also the valuable things in space. If one of those

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Speaker 1: happens right now, our crew on the space station does

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Speaker 1: not have a complete perfect shielding from it, we get

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Speaker 1: higher radiation dosage on the spaceship we watch. We stay

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Speaker 1: within OSHA rules. We don't allow a certain cumulative dosage

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Speaker 1: in over your life, but but a big, ugly burp

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Speaker 1: from the Sun, it's one of the things that we

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Speaker 1: hope isn't going to happen while we're up there. We

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Speaker 1: have some parts of the station that are better shielded

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Speaker 1: than others, but none of them are as good as

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Speaker 1: the thick, wet atmosphere that's above our head here protecting

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Speaker 1: us on the surface. It's just part of the many

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Speaker 1: thousands of risks that we take in order to be

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Speaker 1: the astronauts who are starting to explore the rest of

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Speaker 1: everything else. Chris I was a friend of the late

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Speaker 1: Apollo fourteen astronaut Edgar Mitchell, and he was a staunch

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Speaker 1: believer in extraterrestrial life. What are your thoughts on that? Well,

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Speaker 1: I'm evidence based guy. Of course, you can believe whatever

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Speaker 1: you like, and that's that's how a lot of things

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Speaker 1: get started, is through belief. Sure, But but I respect

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Speaker 1: other people's beliefs, of course, but that doesn't mean that

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Speaker 1: I believe the same thing. But I think the evidence

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Speaker 1: recently is really interesting in that our best telescopes, the

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Speaker 1: ones we've put into orbit, are seeing planets around other stars.

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Speaker 1: And we didn't. We thought we believed that maybe those

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Speaker 1: existed in the past, But now we know for sure

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Speaker 1: that on average every star has a planet, and probably

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Speaker 1: more than one. And so then suddenly you can start

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Speaker 1: to make not just conjecture, but actually logical thought. If

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Speaker 1: every single star has at least one planet, and by

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Speaker 1: measuring them, we know how many of those stars the

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Speaker 1: planets are in the zone where it's not too hot,

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Speaker 1: not too cold, where maybe our type of life could exist,

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Speaker 1: then you can start to just add up the odds.

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Speaker 1: You know how many stars are there, and it's a

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Speaker 1: question we can kind of answer because we can count

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Speaker 1: the stars in our own galaxy, and we can count

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Speaker 1: galaxies because they're bright. So if you can start to

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Speaker 1: count how many planets there must be, then you can

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Speaker 1: figure the odds of we know for sure there's life

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Speaker 1: on Earth. You can just figure in the odds of

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Speaker 1: what are the odds if there's life somewhere else? And

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Speaker 1: when you tally up the numbers, the best, the best

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Speaker 1: numbers I've heard, George, if the number is so huge

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Speaker 1: as the number of planets are that it's almost unimaginable.

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Speaker 1: It's not like not a billion or a trillion, or

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Speaker 1: a quadrillion or a quintillion. It's like a seven billion,

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Speaker 1: you know, a septillion, which is unbelievable. It's basically infinite

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Speaker 1: in a huge imagination. And so if there's an infinite

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Speaker 1: number of planets, which we've recently essentially proven, then it's

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Speaker 1: it's kind of arrogant to think that ours is the

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Speaker 1: only one that developed life. I mean, that doesn't even

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Speaker 1: logically follow. So so my intuition is such that there

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Speaker 1: has to be life somewhere besides Earth. It just seems

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Speaker 1: illogical and improbable that there wouldn't be. The real question is, though, where,

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Speaker 1: and is it just blue green algae like exists at

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Speaker 1: an Earth for billions of years, or is their intelligent

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Speaker 1: life somewhere besides Earth And we haven't found any evidence

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Speaker 1: that there's intelligent life anywhere but Earth, and we're looking.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's why we're drilling down into Mars right now.

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Speaker 1: And you mentioned Venus in the opener. There's some people

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Speaker 1: we know that Venus had earthlike conditions for a billion

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Speaker 1: years early in its formation. There's some people think there

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Speaker 1: may still be vestigial life in the upper clouds of Venus,

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Speaker 1: Europa and Enceladus, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. They

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Speaker 1: have water spewing out into space and they've had liquid

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Speaker 1: water for essentially what must be billions of years, and

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Speaker 1: those are the conditions that formed life on Earth. So

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Speaker 1: we might be able to answer your question, kind of

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Speaker 1: everybody's question within the next few years by finding life

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Speaker 1: on Mars or life Enceladus, or life in Europa. And

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Speaker 1: I think that would be a really important step, not

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Speaker 1: just belief or conjecture, but actually irrefutable, worldwide, hold it

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Speaker 1: in your hand kind of evidence that Yep, there's life

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Speaker 1: somewhere besides Earth. We haven't found it yet, but that's

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Speaker 1: part of the reason we're exploring is to try and

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Speaker 1: answer that specific question. Have you seen the video that

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Speaker 1: the Pentagon released of the Navy jet fighter pilots chasing

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Speaker 1: what they call the tic tac Ufo. I don't know

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Speaker 1: if you've seen that or not. It's an amazing piet

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Speaker 1: of when you know, I was a fighter pilot and

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Speaker 1: I flew in the Earth's upper atmosphere for more than

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Speaker 1: a decade. I've been around the world two thousand, six

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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty times. So when when there's a little

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Speaker 1: grainy clip somewhere on the Internet of something someone's purported

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Speaker 1: to have seen, I'm always very suspicious. I have a

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Speaker 1: lot of personal, practical, uh experience in those environments. I

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Speaker 1: don't have to take anybody else's word for it. And

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Speaker 1: and so there's lots of things we don't understand. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I don't I don't discount that and uh, and there's

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Speaker 1: lots of things that we haven't discovered yet. So I'm

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Speaker 1: really a curious human being, sure, but I'm much more

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Speaker 1: interested in in evidence based, careful brick by brick built understanding,

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Speaker 1: using the scientific method to figure out where we are

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Speaker 1: and what's going on. And so I take everything with

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Speaker 1: a with a huge grain of salt until until there's

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Speaker 1: really clear evidence before I accepted it as something that

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Speaker 1: is a fact. Did you ever see anything up in

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Speaker 1: space that you would say was really strange? Everything's really

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Speaker 1: I knew you'd say that, I'm a life. I mean,

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Speaker 1: when you're witless, everything behaves on intuitively. But no, No,

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Speaker 1: I to get to the point of what you're asking, No,

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Speaker 1: And I don't know of any astronaut that I've ever

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Speaker 1: spoken to in conversation with me who has, so I

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Speaker 1: know there's there's a lot of things that definitely have

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Speaker 1: been taking out of context of the things people have said,

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Speaker 1: and it's something we talk about all the time. And

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Speaker 1: when I look out at the night sky, either sitting

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Speaker 1: here like I am right now, or when I'm on

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Speaker 1: board a spaceship, you have to think about those things.

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Speaker 1: You have to think about the probability that we're not

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Speaker 1: alone in the universe. But but to me, part of

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Speaker 1: the great quest of exploration is to try and actually

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Speaker 1: irrefutably find evidence to answer that question, and we haven't yet.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast am every weeknight at

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Speaker 1: one am Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am

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Speaker 1: dot com for more or