Hadfield - An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth

PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA

COPYRIGHT 2013 CHRIS HADFIELD

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2013 by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, and simultaneously in the United States by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, New York, and in the United Kingdom by Pan Macmillan, London. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited.

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Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint from the following: World In My Eyes, Words and music by Martin Gore, 1990 EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING LTD. This arrangement 2013 EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING LTD. All rights in the U.S. and Canada controlled and administered by EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.

Reprinted with permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Hadfield, Chris An astronauts guide to life on earth / Chris Hadfield.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-345-81272-8

1. Hadfield, Chris. 2. AstronautsCanadaBiography. 3. AstronauticsAnecdotes.

I. Title.

TL 789.85. H 33 A 3 2013 629.450092 C2013-904948-7

Jacket images: (space) Radius Images/Corbis; (earth) Bettmann/CORBIS; (astronaut) Hello Lovely/Corbis.

Interior image credits: , Soyuz landing, credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

v3.1

To Helene, with love.

Your confidence, impetus and endless help
made these dreams come true.

T HE WINDOWS OF A SPACESHIP casually frame miracles. Every 92 minutes, another sunrise: a layer cake that starts with orange, then a thick wedge of blue, then the richest, darkest icing decorated with stars. The secret patterns of our planet are revealed: mountains bump up rudely from orderly plains, forests are green gashes edged with snow, rivers glint in the sunlight, twisting and turning like silvery worms. Continents splay themselves out whole, surrounded by islands sprinkled across the sea like delicate shards of shattered eggshells.

Floating in the airlock before my first spacewalk, I knew I was on the verge of even rarer beauty. To drift outside, fully immersed in the spectacle of the universe while holding onto a spaceship orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles per hourit was a moment Id been dreaming of and working toward most of my life. But poised on the edge of the sublime, I faced a somewhat ridiculous dilemma: How best to get out there? The hatch was small and circular, but with all my tools strapped to my chest and a huge pack of oxygen tanks and electronics strapped onto my back, I was square. Square astronaut, round hole.

The cinematic moment Id envisioned when I first became an astronaut, the one where the soundtrack swelled while I elegantly pushed off into the jet-black ink of infinite space, would not be happening. Instead, Id have to wiggle out awkwardly and patiently, focused less on the magical than the mundane: trying to avoid snagging my spacesuit or getting snarled in my tether and presenting myself to the universe trussed up like a roped calf.

Gingerly, I pushed myself out headfirst to see the world in a way only a few dozen humans have, wearing a sturdy jetpack with its own thrusting system and joystick so that if all else failed, I could fire my thrusters, powered by a pressurized tank of nitrogen, and steer back to safety. A pinnacle of experience, an unexpected path.

Square astronaut, round hole. Its the story of my life, really: trying to figure out how to get where I want to go when just getting out the door seems impossible. On paper, my career trajectory looks preordained: engineer, fighter pilot, test pilot, astronaut. Typical path for someone in this line of work, straight as a ruler. But thats not how it really was. There were hairpin curves and dead ends all the way along. I wasnt destined to be an astronaut. I had to turn myself into one.

I started when I was 9 years old and my family was spending the summer at our cottage on Stag Island in Ontario. My dad, an airline pilot, was mostly away, flying, but my mom was there, reading in the cool shade of a tall oak whenever she wasnt chasing after the five of us. My older brother, Dave, and I were in constant motion, water-skiing in the mornings, dodging chores and sneaking off to canoe and swim in the afternoons. We didnt have a television set but our neighbors did, and very late on the evening of July 20, 1969, we traipsed across the clearing between our cottages and jammed ourselves into their living room along with just about everybody else on the island. Dave and I perched on the back of a sofa and craned our necks to see the screen. Slowly, methodically, a man descended the leg of a spaceship and carefully stepped onto the surface of the Moon. The image was grainy, but I knew exactly what we were seeing: the impossible, made possible. The room erupted in amazement. The adults shook hands, the kids yelped and whooped. Somehow, we felt as if we were up there with Neil Armstrong, changing the world.

Later, walking back to our cottage, I looked up at the Moon. It was no longer a distant, unknowable orb but a place where people walked, talked, worked and even slept. At that moment, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I was going to follow in the footsteps so boldly imprinted just moments before. Roaring around in a rocket, exploring space, pushing the boundaries of knowledge and human capabilityI knew, with absolute clarity, that I wanted to be an astronaut.

I also knew, as did every kid in Canada, that it was impossible. Astronauts were American. NASA only accepted applications from U.S. citizens, and Canada didnt even have a space agency. But just the day before, it had been impossible to walk on the Moon. Neil Armstrong hadnt let that stop him. Maybe someday it would be possible for me to go too, and if that day ever came, I wanted to be ready.

I was old enough to understand that getting ready wasnt simply a matter of playing space mission with my brothers in our bunk beds, underneath a big National Geographic poster of the Moon. But there was no program I could enroll in, no manual I could read, no one even to ask. There was only one option, I decided. I had to imagine what an astronaut might do if he were 9 years old, then do the exact same thing. I could get started immediately. Would an astronaut eat his vegetables or have potato chips instead? Sleep in late or get up early to read a book?

I didnt announce to my parents or my brothers and sisters that I wanted to be an astronaut. That wouldve elicited approximately the same reaction as announcing that I wanted to be a movie star. But from that night forward, my dream provided direction to my life. I recognized even as a 9-year-old that I had a lot of choices and my decisions mattered. What I did each day would determine the kind of person Id become.