Chris Hadfield talks to Thomas Drayton

Thomas Drayton: Your latest book, "You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes" — that's how long it takes the International Space Station to circle the planet.

Chris Hadfield: Imagine that — 92 minutes. Think what you did in the last 92 minutes. It's a real perspective change of how you think when you go around the world that fast.

What was your desire to write the book, to share the photographs?

When you're living off the planet and going around the world that fast, it's a big, busy laboratory, thriving place with a million things to do. There's the whole world, pouring by. And you take a few pictures and pull the little chip out of the camera, put a fresh chip back in the camera, put that chip in your pocket and zip it up. And then you go back to work. And at the end of the day, you have a whole pocket full of the world, basically. And then I thought, "How can I filter these so that it's something someone else will want to see? If I could take someone around the world just once, what would I really want to show them?"

You orbited the planet 2,597 times. You mentioned you took 45,000 photographs. You considered yourself a hunter, silently stalking certain shots. What were you hunting?

It's not even wildlife photography. You're a still life photographer, which is kind of odd. When you first start taking pictures of the world, you just look for the familiar. Your eye is naturally drawn to something — "There's New York City." And then the next time you come around the world, you go, "Oh, OK, there's New York City and Manhattan. But look, you can see the whole coast, all the way down to New Jersey." And then the next time you come around, you look back, and you go, "Wow, look. You can see right up into the mountains. You see the world differently and more intimately each time. And after a couple thousand times, you're really attuned to the subtleties of it.

What was it like the first time you went to the window, looked down, there's Earth?

It happens right after launch. Launch is so overwhelmingly powerful. It only takes about eight or nine minutes, depending which spaceship you're in. Eight or nine minutes to wrest yourself away from the world, power your way through the atmosphere, get going 5 miles a second. Many engines shut off. You're instantly weightless. And the first thing you want to do is go to the window. It's everybody's reaction. You laugh with relief. You unstrap out of your chair, and as soon as you've got the spaceship squared away, you want to start seeing. And launching out of Florida, the first thing you see is Ireland and England, because you've crossed the Atlantic so quickly. And it's almost the feeling of going into a huge cathedral where there's an unexpected reverence and an awe. 

You've said many times, we're not machines exploring the universe — we're people. What do those words mean to you?

People talk about robotic exploration. And it's interesting and necessary. But it's sort of, to me, glorifying a thermometer. You know, human body temperature, what temperature is it outside? What temperature is it on Mars? That's interesting. But the thermometer doesn't care. And the thermometer was put there by us for a purpose. And information that the thermometer gives us is what matters. And all exploration is like that. There lots of different ways for the information to arrive back to us. But it's what it means to us that matters. A person there, sensing that temperature, would be able to express it in so many different ways. And the effect of it would be so much more significant. It's the raw human experience that's at the core of anything that matters. And that slow process of exploration that's taken us all around the surface of the world. And for the last 50 years has taken us vertical, and for the last 14 years, we've been living on the space station. That slow, incremental step, using all of our inventions to help us understand it … the human presence within it is the only part that really matters. 

Talk about the past 50 years. I want to talk about the future. Space exploration, private versus public space travel. We've seen two recent disasters. One tragically, with Virgin Galactic. What are your thoughts on private versus public?

There's sort of a perception that it's always been just NASA. But of course, NASA has hired private companies to build their rocket ships and their spaceships since the beginning. But at some point, that process gets to a level of safety and understanding that maybe it doesn't have to be a government who hires a company, but maybe a smaller company could hire a company to do it. Or even an individual might be able, at some point, to be able to either send a satellite up or build a spaceship that people could fly in. And we're in that transitional phase in spaceflight right now, where the customer may no longer be the government. 

You see it as the future?

I see it as inevitable. It's a repeated pattern. There's nothing sacrosanct about spaceflight. It's just our current latest, extremely complex technical challenge that we're figuring out one success and one error at a time.

In an interview with The Guardian, you predicted there would be disaster in the private space sector. Is it worth the risk?

I was a test pilot for both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy before I was an astronaut. And that's an extremely risky job. So it's a question I ask myself all the time. What risks are worth taking? I'm not a risk seeker. I'm not a thrill seeker at all. I'm an extremely deliberate, measured risk taker. And I'll only do it if I think it's worth it. To me, the exploration of the rest of the universe is worth it. And it's inevitably going to happen. But it has to happen one small decision at a time. And occasionally, one mistake at a time. You don't always get it right. And what Richard Branson's doing with Virgin Galactic is really hard. And he's taking a big financial risk. And he's putting other people's lives at risk. 

He reached out to you?

That's a big responsibility to shoulder. And I spoke to him right after the accident. Just because of the background that I've had and recognizing what he was about to face, with the recriminations of people, with the accusations of people, but also just with the grieving of the families involved. And how to recognize that this is not completely unknown in the lives of test pilots. It's something that happens when you're pushing the edge of the envelope. Someone had to figure out where the edge was. And if you want it to be further away, you have to take a risk. 

Do you think the U.S. is investing enough in NASA and the space program?

I would love the budget of anything that I'm working on, whether it's my household or any organization that I support, I'd love it to be increased. It's easy to say, "NASA's budget should be doubled" or "Why are we, you know, fighting a war? Why are we doing this when we could be doing that?" I have huge respect for the people who actually shoulder the burden of making those decisions. Because they don't do it lightly. What I try and focus on instead is, we're given this much amount of money, that's basically a measure of trust, that the taxpayers have trusted us with this much money. And we need to use it to the best of our ability. Don't get all wrapped up in "Well, if only we had this much more" but instead say, "We got a pretty good chunk of money here to do something that a lot of people are inspired by." To go to a shuttle launch where half a million people come out to watch a bunch of government employees do their job. To me, that was a wonderful reflection of the unspoken level of responsibility that we had. When we killed the crew of Columbia, to not let all that go in vain. To recognize that we can learn a tremendous amount from what we did wrong on that space shuttle flight and make this whole thing safer, more accessible, so that it becomes more and more a fabric of what we can all do together.

What do you make of other countries, China, India, making small advances in space travel?

We've only been in space for 53 years, as people, since 1961. And Sputnik was in '57. So you know, less than the length of my life, basically, we've been flying in space. It's pretty new. And there's only a few countries that have built rockets at all that can take things into orbit around the world. And only a tiny few that can take people into space. Really just three. The U.S., Russia/Soviet Union and now China. It's almost like all the old exploration. Who could originally sail around the world? Who could take those risks? Who's going to invest that amount to try and then reap the benefits of it? And the fact now that it's a proven technology in the United States, a proven technology in Russia and a proving technology in China, I think it follows an ancient natural pattern. The fact that India put a probe that is going around Mars is terrific.

That China managed to land a rover on the moon, that drove around on the moon for a while shows a lot of potential. But how do you put it all together? How much cooperation should there be? How much competition should there be? And the International Space Station that's up there right now is an interesting and new model for us all, of 15 of those leading nations of the world, working together. Countries that always have serious arguments on the surface, that were fighting the Second World War against each other not that long ago. 

Talk about working together — do you think Russia and the U.S.'s strained relations has compromised the overall mission?

It has never been easy to work internationally on something of the scale of the International Space Station. I was hired as an astronaut in 1992. The Soviet Union had just come apart. And when I was hired, there was never a thought that we would have the Russians as part of the NASA space program. But three years later, I flew and helped build the Russian space station Mir. Flying an American space shuttle. And it laid the groundwork for building the International Space Station. Meanwhile, there's always great arguments on Earth over money and territory and power and inertia and all the other reasons that we argue with each other. But in parallel with that, there are a lot of cooperative things happen that we often forget. And some of them are really big and symbolic. I think when the level of tension and aggression that exists on the surface like we have right now, it is really good, as a counterpoint, to have some rock solid examples of cooperative success. And [the] space station is that right now, it flies in the face of history. But it flies. And the it's up there. Any kid anywhere can walk outside and watch that fly over and think, "Hmm, nearly impossible things do happen." 

I can see you going back to when you were a 9-year-old boy. That's when you were inspired.

I grew up in Canada on a farm and watched Neil [Armstrong] and Buzz [Aldrin] walk on the moon while Mike Collins was orbiting the moon back in July of '69. When Neil took control of that lander, because they were going to land on the rocks and it was going to be a disaster. And he took it over and lifted it up and took it and flew it till he found a smooth spot. And he and Buzz sorted out and touched it down with 16 seconds of fuel left. They had made something impossible happen. And they didn't do it because they had to. They did it because, as a species, we just barely could.

And so for this little Canadian kid, standing in wonder at 9 or 10 years old, it was hugely invitational. It was like someone opening a door saying, "You know what? This type of thing is possible. Here is proof of it. These three people have just demonstrated it." And it affected my thinking for my whole life. 

You made your dreams come true. Let's talk about the fun stuff. Astronaut training — is it everything you expected it would be?

Everything I've done has been fun stuff. I've always been pursuing a little 9-year-old boy's dreams. Astronaut training is hard. It's relentless. Flying a spaceship is really complex. The space station's the most complicated and largest thing we've ever built in orbit. The space shuttle was the most complicated flying machine ever built. Trying to successfully operate those things is difficult. When I flew the Russian Soyuz, I mean, first learn Russian, then learn orbital mechanics and control theory in Russian. And then operate this vehicle in a language that I didn't start studying till I was 35. And to then — I've had a chance to fly in space three times and eventually go on to command the International Space Station. I worked in a hospital gaining medical skills, in emergency, sewing people up, just in case one of my crewmates got sick or injured. I helped film two Imax movies, I'm an Imax cameraman, of all things. All of those skills put together to then go right on the edge of one of the things that we're doing as a species. 

But it takes a special person to be an astronaut.

The selection process to become an astronaut, it's on the edge of impossible, for sure. When I applied, there were 5,300 people sent in their resumes, and they chose four of us. Three of us who flew in space, one who eventually lost his medical, unfortunately. It's a very tiny little subset of humanity. But we just need the right combination of physical health and raw mental ability and proven ability to make good decisions. And we bet everything on the astronauts. We're going to spend all of this time and money training them. And then going to launch them on a rocketship and count on them to do all these things right, with nobody there to help them. So those odds are terrible.

What are some of the drills they put you through? I mean, they teach you. They prep you how to deal with death in space.

When I served as a test pilot, I think that prepped me how to deal with death more than anything I ever did as an astronaut. Test flying is dangerous. I lost one good friend a year, on average, just because of the risks of that job. And at first, it's a new thing. And you grieve very deeply, and you recognize the risk of what you're doing. But after a while, even though the scar of the grieving doesn't go away, at least you find a way internally to deal with it. And you need to have already internalized all of that, I think, the day that they call you from the space agency and say, "Would you like to be an astronaut?" It's not a game. It's not Hollywood. It is "Are you willing to put a significant portion of your life, the next decade or more of your life, into working really hard for something you may never get to do, that is going to risk your life?" That's the real question they're asking. 

How do you feel, though, with fear versus danger?

Thomas, if they grabbed you right now and stuck you inside a rocketship and said, "In 45 minutes, we're launching. If you touch the wrong switch, you die. If you don't touch the right switch, you die. You ready?" So we never put anybody in the cockpit without enough preparation that they start to separate the danger from the fear. Because without preparation, if you don't know what to be alarmed about, everything is alarming. But if you spend enough time learning what doesn't matter and what really does matter and what is the next thing that's going to kill me? I am not person who will take a foolish risk, an unmeasured risk, a risk just for the adrenaline rush. That doesn't appeal to me. 

Was there a heart-pounding moment in space? A moment that scared you?

The only time I really remember feeling just a raw animal shiver of fear go up my back was watching a shooting star. You know, like a meteorite enter the atmosphere. It's as beautiful as they are from Earth. Maybe more beautiful. Because you're looking at the immense darkness of the earth. And then there's this blistering streak of light cuts across the sky. And my first reaction was, "Wow. Beautiful. A shooting star." But then I thought, "Wait a minute. What was that really?" That was a big, blundering, ancient rock from the universe coming in at —who knows? — 20 miles a second, that went between me and the Earth. Me here in my little spaceship. And if it had been just a little higher and hit us, and instead of suddenly feeling like I was on the front of the Titanic as king of the world and this big unstoppable vehicle, suddenly my spaceship felt like a little bubble. 

But you went blind in space. That wasn't one of the scariest moments?

I've done two spacewalks. They're dangerous. And they're hard. We only go out where we really need the dexterity of human hands to go fix something. Or we need the cleverness of the human brain to be able to look at a problem and jiggle something into place or a complex task. I was outside on my first walk. We were building the huge robot arm, the cannon arm onto the outside. And one of my eyes went blind. Or at least, it screamed in pain and snapped shut. I didn't know what had caused it. Didn't really know what to do. But you can't rub your eye because you're wearing a helmet. But I thought, "Well, maybe that's why we have two eyes." So I kept working, hoping it would clear. But without gravity tears don't fall. They just stay there. It just sits there as a big steadily increasing ball of tear. Like Jell-O floating on your eye. And so I had this big ball of tear, and I couldn't wipe it on anything. But I could still see with my other eye. So I was working away. But then that ball of tear got big enough that it crossed, like a little waterfall across the bridge of my nose into my other eye. And now both of them were contaminated with whatever the contamination was. And now I was fully blind. I could still think. I could still talk. So in truth, it wasn't scary. It was just, "OK. I got this problem to deal with. Fine. I can't see. But I'm alive. I can still hold on to the spaceship. I can talk to Scott. I can talk to Houston. And maybe I'll start to be able to see after a while. I hope my eyes get better at some point. I don't wanna be blind for the rest of my life." I just kept crying, and the tears got bigger and bigger. But enough that they evaporated slowly. 

It's a close team in space. There's three, six of you on the International Space Station, is it?

We don't randomly choose people and put them on the space station, of course. The thousands of people that apply to NASA, in this last class, they just chose eight people. Four women and four men, out of, I think it was, like, 8,000 or 9,000 people applied. So that's a very unique set of skills that those eight people have. And then from those, they go through years of basic training. Then advanced training, and then we carefully pick a group of three or whatever the number is for the spaceship that are then going to fly together on the space station. And then they train together for years. So you carefully choose a subset of normal humanity with a certain set of skills. You train them for a long time. And then from those, you hand select a few. And then you train them together as a crew. During that training period, we're not just studying hydraulics and mechanics. But we go out and live in the desert together. Or we climb a mountain together. You live at the bottom of the ocean together. You become family. You probably spend more time with your crew than you do with your real family as you train at all the space centers around the world. And by the time you launch, by the time the engines ignite underneath your rocketship, you have a technical understanding of each other. But also a psychological, human bond with the other people that is really strong and has built a competence that supersedes yourself. And you count on those people with your life, constantly. 

You also played in space "Space Oddity."

I wrote a whole suite of music up on the space station. And performed a bunch of stuff, but including a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," which has been seen, I think just where my son posted, that site, it's been seen almost 25 million times.

But what's interesting about that, and it goes right back to your other question, is it crosses over the fantasy and the daydreaming fictional side of what space travel might be, which is Bowie's song, originally written back before we'd even walked on the moon. "Space Oddity" or maybe "2001," you know, "A Space Odyssey," that whole fanciful idea — it is now interwoven with reality. This is what we actually do. This is a guy. This is a person up there, singing that song. But in a place that was only fantasized about. And it's real. This is part of human culture. 

Astronomically, what do you think the greatest discovery will be in your lifetime?

There are a couple things that'll make an enormous difference on Earth once we figure them out. One is how to truly get the energy out of the atom without causing poison or waste. And if we can someday actually figure out fusion. But it's still a long ways away. But that will be a huge change. A much more compact, nonpolluting energy source would make an enormous difference, not only in daily life but in the whole geopolitical structure of the world. Also, if we could figure out what gravity is. We don't know. We can measure it. We can do the math that shows the attractive force between two bodies due to gravity. But we don't know what causes it. And we have no control over it. But in almost all of the science fiction movies — right? — from "Back to the Future" to "Star Trek," where everybody's always walking around in their spaceships, somehow they figured out a way to control gravity. And if we could ever do that, if you could just put a little box of anti-gravity under something and send it up to space, it sounds fanciful. But look at some of the airliners we have now. And look at a cellphone, and look at some of the technologies that are normal in life right now.

This interview has been edited and condensed.