NEW YORK—What do you do after you’ve achieved the ultimate goal of your avocation—not once, but three times? That’s the question facing Chris Hadfield, who capped 25 years of NASA service by commanding both the International Space Station and an audience of millions on YouTube and Twitter. Hadfield gave a partial answer recently during a public talk at the American Museum of Natural History: get as many people as possible to understand the experience and try to use that to keep the public supporting a program of space exploration.
Hadfield may be an unassuming looking man—he’s got nothing like the imposing build of astronaut and former football player Leland Melvin—but you don’t get sent to space three times without having an imposing set of talents. He said that, in addition to the expected job skills, he spent time in a Texas emergency room, stitching up and intubating people as part of the preparations to handle anything that might come up while in space. And millions saw his musical and photographic skills on display since.
Now you can add “performer” to Hadfield’s long list of accomplishments. He wove together a series of anecdotes into a coherent, compelling show, gesturing animatedly and lying back on the floor to demonstrate the Soyuz launch posture. Parts of it might have been scripted or at least well practiced, but there were others that seemed spontaneous. While an orbital photo of San Francisco was on the screen, someone from the audience had to tell him that both the bridge and the large park were named Golden Gate. At that point, he called everything visible "Golden Gate" something or other, including New York’s Central Park when it appeared in the next picture. He was also just as easygoing and clear when handling questions from the audience.Liftoff
Hadfield took the audience on a single trip to space, stitched together from the three he took. He switched back and forth among them to find the most compelling story (the Shuttle starred for liftoff, Soyuz for landing). As part of this theatrical trip, he brought astronauts back down to Earth and off the pedestal we sometimes place them on. When discussing what meal should start a day that would end with him either floating weightless or dead, he said he was told “eat something creamy, because you’re going to be seeing it again the same day. And you might as well make it colorful.” The additional advice? Add some catsup.
The first items of NASA-issued launch clothing Hadfield had to put on were a pair of black socks and what he called a “big boy diaper.” The less-than-imposing image was made complete by the fact that “Johnson & Johnson used to put pink and blue astronauts on them at the time.”
By the time he was ready to be put into his flight suit, however, he was in the same room where some of his heroes, Armstrong and Aldrin, sat in the same chairs. And as Hadfield was driven out to the Shuttle, he watched everyone else driving away, fleeing the impending explosion that would hopefully end up controlled and pointed in the same direction.
Hadfield provided a great description of getting to orbit, noting that going up isn’t good enough, because you’d simply fall down the way you came. Instead, you have to also move sideways fast enough that you perpetually fall down over the horizon. That means reaching a speed of five miles a second—fast enough to make it from New York to LA in nine minutes.
In the Shuttle’s case, that means having access to something like 80 million horsepower, burning 12 tons of fuel a second. Some of that came from the solid rocket boosters, which he said you can’t shut off and can’t throttle. “When they get lit, you’re going somewhere, that’s for sure.” The main engines, in contrast, are very smooth. Once they're above the atmosphere, they can generate so much acceleration that they have to be throttled down to avoid tearing the Shuttle apart.
It’s amazing, but Hadfield wasn’t impressed. “It’s a stupid way to get to space. We’re going to look back 100 years from now and think ‘what a stupid thing.’”
Orbit
Weightlessness also had its pros and cons. “This talk would be way more fun if we were all weightless,” Hadfield said before describing its liberating effects, including its tendency to liberate your lunch. “You’d do a thousand summersaults and then everyone would throw up.” Weightlessness even adds an interesting twist to that. NASA provides standard-issue barf bags, but without gravity to hold the contents in them, the barf actually hits the bottom and rebounds right back out. So the bags come equipped with a cloth to clean your face off afterwards.
Hadfield talked about the packed schedule of scientific experiments that astronauts run through on the International Space Station, showing pictures of experiments in progress. As an example, he shared how a flame burns in low gravity (hot air can’t rise, so there’s no convection, and flames end up oxygen starved). Hadfield also discussed his two space walks, showing video of his first exit from the station. That clearly shows him stopping to soak in the sight of it all while halfway out the airlock. “The world on one side, the bottomlessness of the Universe on the other—you’re in the Universe with the world.”
Hadfield said that NASA allots exactly zero minutes for taking photographs, yet somehow he ended up taking 45,000. That was more than enough to make him famous on Twitter. After his experience, Hadfield had nothing but good things to say about Twitter and similar services. “Social media is missed by almost every organization I run into—it’s a way to have an open, honest, two-way conversation with everyone on the planet.” Even, apparently, if you’re not on the planet.
Reentry
Hadfield found the Shuttle’s return to Earth to be an excellent experience, but those don’t make great stories of course. Instead, he talked about Soyuz. The deceleration through the atmosphere leaves the astronauts squished against their seats, which he said “seems so unfair after all that time weightless.” That’s followed by a set of parachutes and then what are called “soft landing rockets.” He showed a video of their brief firing as the capsule is just feet from the ground; clearly they don’t soften much. “Those rockets just turn a horrible crash into a survivable crash.” If it’s windy, the parachutes can turn the capsule end-over-end for a while before it stops, coating its exterior with pieces of Kazakstan.
Exiting the capsule is done without ceremony. “They pull you out like you’re a bag of flour and then plunk you down into some cheap looking deck chairs.” Hadfield said he felt awful, his balance system was shot, his blood forgot which end was up, and he wanted to vomit once again. But his astronaut training kicked in when someone pulled out a camera, and he’s shown giving a half-hearted thumbs-up from his deck chair.
These days, almost a year and a half later, the hangover from weightlessness is long gone and his bones have mostly regrown their former strength. But Hadfield’s still looking for those personal connections he got hooked on while in space. He is clearly comfortable connecting through just about any medium, social or otherwise. So beyond the live performance—which included a rendition of his slightly-modified "Space Oddity"—he’s also done a book with his images (his second). This isn’t an attempt to cash in; any profits are going to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Apparently, one of the books is also being developed into a sitcom. Whether that will establish any rapport with its audience without Hadfield’s personal involvement isn’t clear.
Hadfield's goal is clearly to continue to share his experiences of space, but that’s just part of a larger vision of convincing people that space is humanity’s next great exploratory frontier. He said we’ve approached it the way humans have approached exploration since they started to leave Africa: we’ve sent a few of our younger generation out to check things out. When they came back safely, the next step is to move in. The International Space Station is us moving into orbit. He suggested the ISS’ 14 years of occupation was the start of humanity’s permanent occupation of space.
And he also said that, if we’re to follow the pattern that’s been set, the next obvious step is to colonize the Moon. Hadfield thinks commercial spacecraft may be a key step to doing it, as he believes it can break us out of the pattern we’ve been in since Apollo. (The pattern: we cancel a program and then set about designing a replacement, rather than having one ready when the last vehicle’s retired.) Hadfield sees this work opening orbit to a much wider audience, allowing more people to share his experience.
After listening to him and seeing his pictures again, I’m ready to go—even if it will inevitably involve an ineffective barf bag.
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