1
00:00:00,330 --> 00:00:23,370
Music.

2
00:00:23,370 --> 00:00:29,120
Chris Hadfield: I decided to be an astronaut on July 20, 1969, because that's the night that Neil and

3
00:00:29,120 --> 00:00:31,650
Buzz walked on the moon while Mike was orbiting around.

4
00:00:31,650 --> 00:00:37,770
I was nine, almost 10, and I watched it over at a neighbor's place.

5
00:00:37,770 --> 00:00:42,200
We didn't have a TV and over at a neighbor's place, watching it, a whole bunch of people crowded in the living room,

6
00:00:42,200 --> 00:00:47,430
walked outside, looked up at the moon and in my little 9-year-old boy's brain said,

7
00:00:47,430 --> 00:00:51,680
"Wow, I'm going to grow up to be something, I think I'm going to grow up to be that!

8
00:00:51,680 --> 00:00:55,160
That looks like an interesting thing to do with my life.

9
00:00:55,160 --> 00:01:00,970
So I consciously decided, well like a million other kids, consciously decided on that night.

10
00:01:00,970 --> 00:01:07,500
So I was very much inspired by the early pioneers of space, by the early explorers and by the

11
00:01:07,500 --> 00:01:17,640
tremendous capability that comes with a challenge like spaceflight.

12
00:01:17,640 --> 00:01:21,840
Chris Hadfield: When I decided to be an astronaut, it wasn't hard, it was impossible. I'm Canadian.

13
00:01:21,840 --> 00:01:26,870
There was no Canadian astronaut program. We didn't have a space agency at the time.

14
00:01:26,870 --> 00:01:31,250
It was completely impossible. But I had a look at what Neil and Buzz and Mike had done and

15
00:01:31,250 --> 00:01:34,510
I looked at what Yuri Gagarin and Alexei Leonov had done and I thought,

16
00:01:34,510 --> 00:01:38,820
well, if I start heading my life in that direction, we'll see what the future brings.

17
00:01:38,820 --> 00:01:42,790
And there were all sets of setbacks along the way, it wasn't a linear process at all.

18
00:01:42,790 --> 00:01:49,710
It was nothing but dead-ends and guessing and trying but here I stand, whatever, 42 years later,

19
00:01:49,710 --> 00:01:56,050
having flown in space twice on two different space shuttles and now going to launch on one of the same sort of

20
00:01:56,050 --> 00:02:03,100
spaceships that Alexei Leonov and Yuri Gagarin launched on and going to go live on the International Space Station

21
00:02:03,100 --> 00:02:04,810
and going to command the International Space Station.

22
00:02:04,810 --> 00:02:16,190
So, sometimes inspiration and dead-ends can lead to a pretty amazing life of dreams.

23
00:02:16,190 --> 00:02:20,540
Chris Hadfield: Launch takes a little under nine minutes, the first thing you want to do is look

24
00:02:20,540 --> 00:02:23,720
out the window because you want to see what it looks like.

25
00:02:23,720 --> 00:02:27,890
You want to see the black sky and horizon and all of the Earth below you.

26
00:02:27,890 --> 00:02:32,680
And it's amazing, you launch out of Florida but by the time you get to the window, you're over Europe,

27
00:02:32,680 --> 00:02:35,980
you know, by the time you get a camera out, you're looking at central Europe and

28
00:02:35,980 --> 00:02:40,870
I'd calculated and realized that 90 minutes after launch, with the world turning underneath me, 90 minutes,

29
00:02:40,870 --> 00:02:43,580
just an hour and a half, we'd come over the town I was born in,

30
00:02:43,580 --> 00:02:48,660
in Canada and we were going to drive right down the highway basically that led from the town I was born in to where

31
00:02:48,660 --> 00:02:52,270
my parents live to where I grew up and where I learned to fly.

32
00:02:52,270 --> 00:02:59,890
And so I had that time. My watch went off about 80 minutes after launch and had the camera ready and so my really

33
00:02:59,890 --> 00:03:06,440
first good look at Earth was one orbit later and I had my camera ready because when things go by at 5 miles a second,

34
00:03:06,440 --> 00:03:13,140
and I was watching the town where I was born and my family's cottage and all that history that was really important

35
00:03:13,140 --> 00:03:21,680
for me just rolling inexorably underneath me and the speed of it, and the quickness with which we'd come around the planet.