Chris Hadfield
Chris Hadfield
Chris Austin Hadfield OC OOnt MSC CDis a retired Canadian astronaut who was the first Canadian to walk in space. An engineer and former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot, Hadfield has flown two space shuttle missions and served as commander of the International Space Station...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth29 August 1959
CitySarnia, Canada
CountryCanada
arm beautiful moving pallet
It's beautiful to see the Big Arm moving the pallet around, ... Big relief.
almost based generally homes moderate occupied outer people places remarkable shape source suburb towns
It was remarkable to see from space how predictable people are. Our homes and towns are almost all in places with moderate temperatures, and they generally have the same shape - a thinly occupied outer blob of suburb surrounding a densely populated core, all based around a ready source of water.
carbon deal staying uses
It's a really big deal to do a spacewalk. It's much riskier than staying indoors. It's complex. It uses up a lot of the precious resources onboard. It uses up oxygen. It uses up carbon dioxide scrubbers.
shuttle space station stay time
When I did my spacewalks, it was during space station construction. So the shuttle was docked to the fledgling ISS at the time. So we would always stay tethered.
astronaut canadian possible time
When I was nine, I wanted to be an astronaut but at that time there weren't any Canadian astronauts. You had to be American or Soviet. So many things will be possible in your lifetimes.
belly body floating match throw
When we first get to space, we feel sick. Your body is really confused. You're dizzy. Your lunch is floating around in your belly because you're floating. What you see doesn't match what you feel, and you want to throw up.
space station
You made the first space station docking look effortless,
although bad grade great happen knowledge worst
Although simulators are great for building step-by-step knowledge of a procedure, the worst thing that can happen in a sim is that you get a bad grade on your performance.
ability ended proven providing raw record sort track worked
That's how we ended up providing those things, not by some sort of graciousness, but because of our raw ability and proven track record and they worked perfectly.
built everybody exactly letter worked
And then when we assembled it, the mechanism, which was built in Russia, just worked exactly like everybody said, so it was letter perfect.
half nine
As an astronaut, especially during launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes.
existence glance holding known left phenomenal realise
Spacewalking trumps everything. Viscerally, it is a phenomenal place to be; to be able to glance right and see the world, glance left and see the universe, and realise for a moment that you're holding on to your known existence with one hand. That's the thing.
canadian invention
So without that Canadian invention we were grounded,
bring everywhere pen sign
Now, as an astronaut, I have to bring a Sharpie with me everywhere - so I have a pen to sign autographs.