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
boy excited news nine time year
In the late '60s, I was seven, eight, nine years old, and what was going on in the news at that time that really excited a seven, eight, nine year old boy was the Space Race.
taken years squares
Square astronaut, round hole. But somehow, I'd managed to push myself through it, and here was the truly amazing part: along the way, I'd become a good fit. It had only taken 21 years.
loss reality years
Still, I also know that most people, including me, tend to applaud the wrong things: the showy, dramatic record-setting sprint rather than the years of dogged preparation or the unwavering grace displayed during a string of losses. Applause, then, never bore much relation to the reality of my life as an astronaut, which was not all about, or even mostly about, flying around in space.
years space-flight two
For the last several years and culminating in six months in orbit next year, I've been training for my third space flight. This one is almost in a category completely different than the previous two, specifically to live in on the space station for six months, to command a space ship and to fly a new rocket ship.
waiting-rooms years space
One Chief Astronaut used to make a point of phoning the front desk at the clinic where applicants are sent for medical testing, to find out which ones treated the staff well-and which ones stood out in a bad way. The nurses and clinic staff have seen a whole lot of astronauts over the years, and they know what the wrong stuff looks like. A person with a superiority complex might unwittingly, right there in the waiting room, quash his or her chances of ever going to space.
airline cooked food kept oven station stored year
Airline food is cooked in an oven and then kept warm. Space station food is often cooked in an oven and then thermo-stabilised, irradiated or dehydrated and then stored for a year or two before you even get to it.
born discovered north oil small
I was born in Sarnia, Ontario; a small town, it's where oil was pretty much discovered in North America.
accomplish ambition elected exercise intention leadership lots politics using ways
I think there are lots of ways to exercise ambition and accomplish things using leadership without going into elected politics. So, categorically, I have no intention of going into elected politics. None.
best build canada capability extension looked nasa needed order outside plus promising
When we needed a long extension on the Canadarm 1 in order to be able to inspect the outside plus sensors on the end, NASA . . . looked through the whole world for who had the best capability and the most promising ability to build something and Canada won.
cause either lose people suit
To be on my very first spacewalk, to be outside, and to have contamination in my suit to the point that I couldn't see in either eye - that, I think, would cause some people to lose control.
arm necessary operators robotic
To be one of the world's top space robotic arm operators is a necessary skill for an astronaut, but it doesn't have much carry-over.
control couple daily google half headlines internet kept mission news sent space time ways
While on the space station, I kept up with news a couple of ways - Mission Control sent daily summaries, and I would scan headlines on Google News when we had an Internet connection, which was about half the time.
caribbean fit geographic hard joined natural necklace picture together
When you're on one of the Caribbean islands, sometimes it's hard to picture how they fit in with the rest, but when you see them all joined together like a necklace from space, you see the natural geographic connectedness of them all.
airline barbados next somewhere travelled
My father was an airline pilot, so we travelled more spontaneously than a lot of families. On a Thursday, we could decide to go somewhere like Barbados the next day for a long weekend.