Chris Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut and spaceship commander, musician, speaker and author. His new book, Final Orbit, will be published in October. He is also appearing in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in June.
How agreeable are you?
I’m above average agreeable. I tend to keep my initial gut reactions in check. I tend to underreact to things. And so, I think that all-in-all, I’m very slow to fly off the handle or to snap judge. But when I’m tired and hungry, I’m just as mean as everybody else.
What’s your middle name and what do you think of it?
My middle name is Austin. It was the name of my great-grandfather, who was the one who took the enormous leap to cross the Atlantic 115 years ago and settle the Hadfields in Canada. So, it’s with great honour I carry the name Austin.
Where is your favourite place in Ireland?
Anywhere that I’m holding my granddaughter. She’s only two weeks old. I’ve just held her in Dublin, in Sandymount. I’ve travelled lots in Ireland. I’ve been to Cork and been to Limerick. We drove the Wild Atlantic Way. I’ve seen a reasonable amount of Ireland. And I’ve crossed it on board spaceships, thousands of times. So, I’ve had a good look at it. The beauty is, after the long slow blue of the ocean, it is wonderful to see the very distinct green of Ireland.
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Describe yourself in three words.
Lucky. Purposeful. Thoughtful.
When did you last get angry?
When I saw the bombastic spoutings of the current US president actually turn to action to alienate my country makes me angry. To have a country that’s been an ally for over 200 years suddenly turn on us because of the vanity and greed of a transient president. And attempt to dissolve the structure that has allowed us to have primarily peace for almost a hundred years is so incredibly disappointing and irresponsible. But it also just makes me angry because he’s treated our country like a chattel and it shows such a disconnect from history, from actual understanding of how international things happen. I’ve spent my entire life serving my country and working peacefully and cooperatively with multiple other nations of the world, including the United States. I served on exchange in the United States air force. I served on exchange in the United States navy. I served as a Canadian astronaut within Nasa. I was Nasa’s director of operations in Russia. I was Nasa’s chief of space station operations. I commanded an international space station, including an American crew. I’ve spent an entire lifetime furthering the global benefits of thoughtful, peaceful co-operation. And to see that being not just threatened, but happening between the United States, specifically in my case, and Canada, but also the rest of the world, is just incredibly disappointing and puzzling and frustrating, and definitely anger-making.
What have you lost that you would like to have back?
My friends who died young. I come from dangerous professions. I don’t miss things. I don’t miss previous portions of my own life. What I miss are the people that didn’t get to live a full natural life and who should have still been here now, as lucky as I am to enjoy this stage of life. That’s who I miss.
What’s your strongest childhood memory?
Depends how you measure strongest. I guess the most significant, probably, and most predictably, probably, is watching Neil [Armstrong] and Buzz [Aldrin] land on the moon, the summer that I turned 10.
Where do you come in your family’s birth order, and has this defined you?
Second of five. I think it’s a privileged position to be in, because your parents aren’t quite yet overwhelmed. And you have an elder sibling, in my case an elder brother, to at least start into the initial battles of what the children’s rights are going to be in the union that is your particular family. And also, I had the example of my older brother to look up to. I count myself lucky to be second of five.
What do you expect to happen when you die?
Nothing. I don’t really have any expectation. I imagine, it depends how, but just reflecting back on all my friends that have died, and some family members, I expect it will be sad for the folks that love me and are close to me. I expect there will be a period of mourning. I expect I’ll be cremated and interred somewhere, but it doesn’t matter to me. And I expect that most of the world won’t notice, naturally, and that life will go on. It’s what’s happening while I’m alive that’s far more important than when I died. I don’t believe in the afterlife. You get one shot.
When were you happiest?
I’m happy every day. There was never any moment I was happiest. There are joyful things that happen every single day. And I think the most important thing is to notice them, and not give them short shrift, or somehow get distracted and not notice that there’s joyful stuff happening all the time. My daughter just had a baby. I have a new granddaughter. It’s as magnificent as life gets. I can’t think of anything that would make me happier. Holding Wren in my arms for the first time, a few days ago, makes me as happy as I can imagine. But luckily, it’s not the only time I’ve been happy in life. I’m extremely realistic about life. Part of the fact that I don’t think there’s an afterlife – I’m very evidence based – there’s zero evidence for an afterlife, so why would I pin my hopes on something that there is zero evidence for, that seems illogical. So, if you think there is no afterlife, that makes it so much more important how you conduct every day of the 30,000 days that you get as a living being. Think about 30,000 days if you live a long life. That’s a lot of chances to be happy.
Which actor would play you in a biopic about your life?
I have no idea. I don’t know actors. Someone with a moustache. Whoever’s going to play me is going to have to have a moustache. Even if it’s Meryl Streep, she’ll have to grow a moustache. She’s a great actress. She could play me fine, but she will have to have a moustache.
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What’s your biggest career/personal regret?
To regret things is kind of damaging. I think you have to accept the things that didn’t go well, or didn’t go the way you dreamed. If you regret them, how are you going to resolve that? It’s like a gnawing, open sore. I try to come to terms with the reality of my own life and accept it and move forwards. I spend very little time looking backwards. There’s lots of things I did wrong, and lots of choices I could have made, and lots of different ways that life could have gone. You can regret things like the Columbia accident, where seven of my friends died. I watched that video of that piece of foam coming off the shuttle, and hitting their left wing over and over and over again. I saw the big explosion of when it hit the leading edge of the wing, but you couldn’t see the damage to the wing. And I didn’t make it my life’s work to demand that they do a spacewalk to go and see if that wing was damaged or not. I didn’t. I accepted the fact that ‘yeah, it’s not what we’ve seen before but it’s probably okay, and there’s other people working on it, so it’s not really my [responsibility]‘. But I was a senior, respected, flown astronaut at Nasa. I was the director of operations in Russia, and I could have – would have, could have, should have – but I didn’t and then I regretted it. But then it was ‘okay, if it had been me, not Rick Husband that had been in the commander of Columbia, what would I want Rick to be doing now that I had died?‘. And I wouldn’t want him to spend the rest of his life regretting something, I would have expected him to say ‘what did we learn from this? How can we make space flight better for everybody from now on? How can we not ever have this happen again? How can we actually make positive moves forward based on something bad that happened?‘. I regretted it for a while. But I can’t do anything about it. And what really matters is what you do next.
Have you any psychological quirks?
I’m quite deliberate about the things that I choose to do. Someone conclusively told me that eating too much salt is bad for your health, which is both true and something someone told me a long time ago. They said ‘you get way enough salt already. You don’t ever need to add salt to anything and adding salt to things is bad for your health’. And I said ‘Okay I won’t add salt any more’ ... but sometimes food is a little bland so I thought ‘well, can I add pepper?’ and so far as I can find there’s no downside to adding pepper ... and so I add pepper and I just deliberately enjoy it.
In conversation with Jen Hogan
