Chris Hadfield Quotes

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Chris Hadfield

Profession : Astronaut

Birth : August 29, 1959

I've been so lucky to have done two spacewalks. If you looked at your wristwatch, I was outside about 15 hours, which is about 10 times around the world. And, you know, there's a whole time dilation, distortion thing.

Chris Hadfield

Our three big emergencies are fire, loss of pressurization or contaminated atmosphere. Any of those things in a spaceship are very deadly and time critical. Everybody's trained, but I'm the commander of the ship, and it's up to me to decide.

Chris Hadfield

I once made myself black out by pulling G too quickly while flying an F-18. Being unconscious in a single-seat airplane is not good. Fortunately, I woke up in time. I learned how to better plug-in my anti-G suit.

Chris Hadfield

When you look out the window of a spaceship, you see entire countries, vast swaths of continents. One turn of the head covers what once took thousands of years to traverse at ground level.

Chris Hadfield

And then finally, I'm the commander, so I am fundamentally responsible for the lives of the other people on board and the health and longevity of the space station. I need to bring six people back happy, healthy and feeling like they've had the best six months of their life.

Chris Hadfield

The best simulator for spacewalking is underwater - it allows full visuals and body movement in 3D. Virtual reality is good, too, and has some advantages, like full Station simulation, not just part. Like all simulators, they have parts that are wrong and misleading: an important thing to remember when preparing for reality.

Chris Hadfield

Ever since I was nine years old and I watched Neil and Buzz walk on the moon, I have felt passionately that this is an interesting human adventure. This is one of the things we're doing that is really fundamentally important, as we leave our home planet, but also exciting.

Chris Hadfield

Space is not a good place to mix foods because as soon as you take something out of the package, it becomes a flying object.

Chris Hadfield

Spacewalking trumps everything. Viscerally, it is a phenomenal place to be; to be able to glance right and see the world, glance left and see the universe, and realise for a moment that you're holding on to your known existence with one hand. That's the thing.

Chris Hadfield

In the astronaut business - the shuttle is a very complicated vehicle; it's the most complicated flying machine ever built. And in the astronaut business, we have a saying, which is, 'There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse.'

Chris Hadfield

Now, as an astronaut, I have to bring a Sharpie with me everywhere - so I have a pen to sign autographs.

Chris Hadfield

It's a really big deal to do a spacewalk. It's much riskier than staying indoors. It's complex. It uses up a lot of the precious resources onboard. It uses up oxygen. It uses up carbon dioxide scrubbers.

Chris Hadfield

I was born in Sarnia, Ontario; a small town, it's where oil was pretty much discovered in North America.

Chris Hadfield

I've raised three kids: my wife and I have three kids. I've observed through direct contact the adults they are now is partially the product of where they came from and what we did. With them growing up, but partially how they were wired at birth.

Chris Hadfield

I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.

Chris Hadfield

For whatever reason, I decided: 'I'm 18, I'm a man, I'm going to grow a moustache' - and it was pathetic for years - it was awful.

Chris Hadfield

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.

Chris Hadfield

Think about what happens on Earth when you throw up. You throw up and you have a bag of something horrible and then you throw it away, but if I have this bag, what am I going to do with it? This bag is going to stay with me in space for months, so we want a really good barf bag.

Chris Hadfield

I've put a lot of my life into making it possible to fly in space at all.

Chris Hadfield

And now for Return to Flight, I'm chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian.

Chris Hadfield