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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 Norry

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Speaker 1: with you. Astronaut Chris Headfield has flown three space missions,

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Speaker 1: built two space stations, performed two spacewalks, crew the Shuttle

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Speaker 1: and so YEZ, and in twenty thirteen became the commander

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Speaker 1: of the International Space Station for six months. Formerly NASA's

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Speaker 1: Director of Operations, Chris is a heavily decorated astronaut, engineer pilot.

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Speaker 1: He was named the top test pilot in both the

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Speaker 1: US Air Force the US Navy and was inducted into

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Speaker 1: the Canada Aviation Hall of Fame. Chris is the co

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Speaker 1: creator and host of the BBC series Astronauts Do You

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Speaker 1: Have What It Takes? As well as the co host

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Speaker 1: with actor Will Smith, of the National geographics One Strange Rock. Additionally,

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Speaker 1: he is an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo

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Speaker 1: and adviser to SpaceX and Virgin Galactic and chairperson to

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Speaker 1: the Board of the Open Lunar Foundation Board in Canada. Chris,

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Speaker 1: welcome back to the program. Good to talk to you again, George.

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Speaker 1: It's a pleasure to be talking to you, and how

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Speaker 1: are you? Have you been very good, luckily through all

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Speaker 1: of this tumult I'm doing fine. Thank you. How have

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Speaker 1: you been? That's good. Everybody's good and we keep moving ahead.

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Speaker 1: But you're right, it is a strange time these days.

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Speaker 1: It really is remarkable. But congratulations on your success in

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Speaker 1: your efforts of what you've done for really this entire planet.

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Speaker 1: It's quite remarkable. That's a kind thing to say. Thanks.

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Speaker 1: I've been busy, but I'm very happy with some of

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Speaker 1: the impact that it's having and all of the stuff

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Speaker 1: that I'm learning along the way. When you were a

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Speaker 1: little boy, I guess you wanted to become an astronaut,

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Speaker 1: didn't you? Even more than that, George, I hadn't really

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Speaker 1: thought that it was a choice. I assumed it was

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Speaker 1: sort of like a dream. It was suddenly hammered home

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Speaker 1: to me that for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren and

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Speaker 1: Mike Collins, the crew of follow Up, this wasn't just

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Speaker 1: a dream for them, it was actually a choice that

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Speaker 1: they made. They decided, you know, deliberately, to turn themselves

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Speaker 1: into astronauts. And that was kind of an interesting revelation

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Speaker 1: for me, And so I tried to make the same

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Speaker 1: choice of my own life, to not just dream about it,

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Speaker 1: but to actually start making decisions in my own life

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Speaker 1: that would that would help turn me into an astronaut.

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Speaker 1: And you know, as far fetched as that sounds, were

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Speaker 1: a little kid, nine ten years old, that's what led

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Speaker 1: to me doing all those things you mentioned in the

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Speaker 1: intro and living in space and spacewalking and commanding a spaceship.

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Speaker 1: And were you Canada's first astronaut. No, there were three

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Speaker 1: that flew as payload specialists sort of like a guest

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Speaker 1: scientists on the Space Shuttle prior to me, But just

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Speaker 1: because of the timing of it, I was the first

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Speaker 1: mission specialist, the first you know, fully fledged Space Shuttle

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Speaker 1: crew member. But then I served a NASA astronaut for

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Speaker 1: twenty one years and flu in space three times, so

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Speaker 1: and the you know, there were lots of firsts in there,

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Speaker 1: just because it's it's a new business. First Canadian spacewalker,

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Speaker 1: first a commander spaceship, things like that. But that's not

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Speaker 1: because of any great personal talent. That's just lucky timing.

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Speaker 1: How did you occupy your time on the International Space Station.

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Speaker 1: I think i'd get claustrophobic and go nuts. It's a

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Speaker 1: really interesting place to be. First off, you're running about

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Speaker 1: two hundred experiments, so there's a huge list of stuff

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Speaker 1: to do every day, and the space station is really

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Speaker 1: complicated and big, and stuff breaks all the time, so

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Speaker 1: there's this long list of stuff that needs to be

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Speaker 1: fixed every day. And then you have mission control in

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Speaker 1: Houston that everybody knows about, but there's also a mission

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Speaker 1: control in Montreal, there's one near Munich, there's one in Moscow,

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Speaker 1: and there's one outside of Tokyo. And they're all to

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Speaker 1: be kind. They're keeping you from being bored. They've all

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Speaker 1: got a got a stick in the pots of building

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Speaker 1: your agenda every day, so they schedule your time down

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Speaker 1: to five minute increments for the whole six months that

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Speaker 1: you're up there. So it's instead of being bored or claustrophobic,

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Speaker 1: it's like this constant race just to try and keep

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Speaker 1: up with all the stuff that Earth is asking you

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Speaker 1: to do. Did you have some kind of vision issue

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Speaker 1: when you run the ISS? Sort of two parts to

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Speaker 1: an answer to that. A lot of astronauts get a

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Speaker 1: permanent vision degradation by flying in weightlessness for a long time.

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Speaker 1: It's because there's no gravity to push the fluid out

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Speaker 1: of your head like like on Earth, my god, and

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Speaker 1: so for a lot of people that they're intracranial pressure

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Speaker 1: sort of, the pressure that's inside your head and pushing

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Speaker 1: in your eyeballs increases because with a lack of drainage

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Speaker 1: from gravity, and so for a lot of astronauts, when

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Speaker 1: that pressure in your head pushes on the back of

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Speaker 1: your eyeball and your optic nerve, it actually changes your vision,

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Speaker 1: maybe temporarily or for some of the astronauts permanently. It's

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Speaker 1: one of the things we're learning on the space station.

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Speaker 1: In that case, I was lucky in that it didn't

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Speaker 1: just the way I'm plumbed, you know, it didn't change

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Speaker 1: my vision. But I did for a short period during

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Speaker 1: my first spacewalk there was contamination inside my space suit,

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Speaker 1: and I was blinded my left eye and then blow

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Speaker 1: both eyes by the combination of this contamination and the

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Speaker 1: fact that without gravity, your tears don't fall and drain away,

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Speaker 1: so the contamination doesn't get you know, diluted by fresh tear,

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Speaker 1: and then the contaminated tears running down your face. So

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Speaker 1: it took quite a while for contamination to clear and evaporate,

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Speaker 1: and for me to be able to see again while

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Speaker 1: I was outside on my first spacewalk. Oh my god,

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Speaker 1: did that stere you? I think it would have. If

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Speaker 1: I hadn't practiced or prepared or imagine what was going

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Speaker 1: to happen, It would have been a pretty scary thing,

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Speaker 1: if you know, if I was unqualified, But I'd spend

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Speaker 1: decades getting ready. I was a qualified scuba diver and

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Speaker 1: nitrucks and hard hat diver, and and then in the

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Speaker 1: big swimming pool at the or near the Johnson Space

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Speaker 1: Center in Houston where we train, I'd spend hundreds and

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Speaker 1: hundreds of hours underwater and inventing the spacewalks. And one

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Speaker 1: of the things we practiced, George, we actually have a

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Speaker 1: name for it, incapacitated crew rescue. It's where you'll be

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Speaker 1: training underwater and on one of the back communications loops,

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Speaker 1: the instructor will say, Okay, Chris, we want you to

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Speaker 1: see simulate having a problem. Now, don't tell the other spacewalker,

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Speaker 1: and we're just going to see how they react. And

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Speaker 1: so you'll go radio silent and they have to come

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Speaker 1: over and help you back or or you'll they'll tell

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Speaker 1: you to act as if you know something's wrong with

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Speaker 1: your seat, you got a leak, or you're getting the

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Speaker 1: bends or something. You know that pain that divers get,

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Speaker 1: And so we practice for things like that. We didn't

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Speaker 1: specifically practice for me going blind, but all of that

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Speaker 1: training and preparation and visualization, it didn't really change the

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Speaker 1: danger of what was happening, but it sure did decrease

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Speaker 1: my necessity to be scared by it. Well, with astronaut

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Speaker 1: Chris Hadfield, he has written another new book. This is

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Speaker 1: a novel called The Apollo Murderers. We'll get into that

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Speaker 1: in just a moment. It's an ominous title, Chris. We'll

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Speaker 1: get into that and find out how you named it

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Speaker 1: that way. What do you think of the privatization of space?

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Speaker 1: You in favor it the way it's happening, Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: actually I am. Fundamentally it's sort of inevitable, and we're

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Speaker 1: not privatizing the universe, you know, we're privatizing the tiny

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Speaker 1: little bit of space just above our atmosphere that our

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Speaker 1: rockets are now good enough to get us to cheaply

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Speaker 1: and safely. So it's inevitable that you know, it's sort

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Speaker 1: of like if you asked me in nineteen o four,

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Speaker 1: when the Wright Brothers had just flown in nineteen o three, Hey,

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Speaker 1: what do you think of privatizing flying? And it's like, well, shoot,

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Speaker 1: you know, we just barely be there. And it wasn't

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Speaker 1: until the nineteen twenties that airlines started forming in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties that they became really you know, viable and global.

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Speaker 1: And so we're sort of going through that now in

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Speaker 1: space flight, where our machines have gotten good enough that

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Speaker 1: the cost comes way down, So now it becomes feasible

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Speaker 1: for it to become not just government clients but private clients.

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Speaker 1: So it's it's inevitable. I think it's important that we

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Speaker 1: don't just let it be a complete free for all. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: things like orbital debris and how you don't impinge on

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Speaker 1: what someone else is doing, you know, how you need

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Speaker 1: to regulate it. Just like we have air traffic control,

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Speaker 1: we need space traffic control. But I'm for the idea

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Speaker 1: because it's just a straight measure of progress. Had you

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Speaker 1: been in your thirties and forties, Chris, and they asked you,

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Speaker 1: let's go to Mars, You're going to be there for

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Speaker 1: four years would you have gone absolutely? Really? I mean yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, what did you do between the age of

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Speaker 1: thirty two and thirty six that was so important? You know,

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Speaker 1: you wouldn't have wanted to go to be one of

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Speaker 1: the first humans on another planet. You know. Four years

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Speaker 1: may seem like a long time at the start of it,

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Speaker 1: but there are several four year periods of my life.

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Speaker 1: I'd have a hard time picking out one significant thing

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Speaker 1: that I did. And also, it's not just like suddenly

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Speaker 1: you're you're you're walking down the sidewalk and the next

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Speaker 1: day you're on your way to Mars. It's the ten

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Speaker 1: years of work in advance of inventing the space flight

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Speaker 1: and helping the design and pure perfect the space ships

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Speaker 1: and trying to solve all those brand new problems. It

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Speaker 1: pushes people right to the edge without a big challenge.

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Speaker 1: It's it's hard to have good new ideas, you know,

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Speaker 1: And so so yeah, all the great human adventures, I

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Speaker 1: think exploration of the edges of what we know and

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Speaker 1: understand that that's kind of the real the most fascinating

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Speaker 1: part of it all. So so yeah, I think that

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Speaker 1: that's where we're inevitably headed once our technology gets good enough,

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Speaker 1: and I'm happy with the little pieces of it that

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Speaker 1: I've helped contribute so far. Listen to more Coast to

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Speaker 1: Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern, and go

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Speaker 1: to Coast to Coast am dot com for more