Fwd: Chris Hadfield Regretted Not Being Able To Make One Last Spacewalk

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: October 12, 2013 12:02:36 PM GMT-06:00
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Chris Hadfield Regretted Not Being Able To Make One Last Spacewalk

 

 

Chris Hadfield Regretted Not Being Able To Make One Last Spacewalk

by Elizabeth Howell on October 11, 2013

Chris Hadfield during an EVA in 2001. Credit: NASA

Chris Hadfield loved spacewalking. That was clear in a past interview he did for Universe Today:

It is like coming around a corner and seeing the most magnificent sunset of your life, from one horizon to the other where it looks like the whole sky is on fire and there are all those colors, and the sun's rays look like some great painting up over your head. You just want to open your eyes wide and try to look around at the image, and just try and soak it up. It's like that all the time. Or maybe the most beautiful music just filling your soul. Or seeing an absolutely gorgeous person where you can't just help but stare. It's like that all the time.

Late in Hadfield's final mission to space this May, when the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut was commanding the International Space Station Expedition 35 crew, an ammonia leak happened and NASA had to scramble a plan for a spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA), to fix it. (The fix succeeded.) When Hadfield was apprised of the plan, he says in an excerpt from his forthcoming book, he was disappointed:

I wasn't going out. I had a moment where I allowed myself to experience the full force of my disappointment. This would have been the heroic climax of my stint as commander: helping to save the ISS by doing an emergency spacewalk. I'd never have another chance to do an EVA—I'd already informed the CSA that I planned to retire shortly after returning to Earth.

But Chris [Cassidy] and Tom [Marshburn] had both done three previous EVAs, two of them together, on the same part of the station where ammonia was now leaking. They were the obvious people for the job. All this went through my head and heart for a minute or two, then I made a resolution: I was not going to hint that I'd had this pang of envy, or say, even once, that I wished I was doing the EVA. The right call had been made, and I needed to accept it and move on so that we could all focus on the main thing—the only thing, really: working the problem.

An Astronaut's Guide to Live On Earth isn't out until Nov. 3, but Maclean's magazine has a lengthy excerpt that not only talks about the spacewalk, but some behind-the-scenes discussion on Hadfield's awe-inspiring version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" recorded on the International Space Station.

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Chris Hadfield divulges details of dispute that almost kept him from space

by Charlie Gillis on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 4:18pm 

 

James Blair/NASA

TORONTO — Chris Hadfield tangled with space-program doctors mere months before his star turn as commander of the International Space Station, refusing to submit to surgery in a dispute that came close to scrubbing him from his now-celebrated mission.

The former Canadian astronaut reveals details of the impasse—centering on an intestinal injury dating back to his childhood—in a book due to hit shelves October 29.

"Unbeknownst to me, a new panel of four laparoscopic surgeons had been asked to consider whether it would be a good idea to have what they kept calling 'a quick look inside'—in other words, to perform exploratory surgery to see whether I really was okay or not," Hadfield writes in his otherwise even-toned volume, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.

"No one had breathed a word of any of this to me or to the flight surgeons at NASA who would be directly responsible for my health while I was on the ISS. The secrecy and paternalism really bothered me. They trusted me at the helm of the world's space ship, but had been making decisions about my body as though I were a lab rat who didn't merit consultation."

The "they" Hadfield refers to are members of the Multilateral Space Medicine Board (MSMB), a body of representatives from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia who judge the medical fitness of astronauts to go on missions.

Hadfield's medical problem stemmed from an appendectomy he received when he was 11. Scar tissue from the childhood operation caused a blockage of his intestines in 1990, he discloses, sending him into agony while he was vacationing near Sarnia, Ont.

Hadfield underwent surgery at that time to remove the blockage, and quickly resumed the career path that eventually led him to space.

But in October 2011, in the midst of his preparations for Expedition 35 to the ISS, Hadfield began feeling stomach pains. Doctors recommended conventional surgery to uncover the problem. But Hadfield feared such an invasive operation would derail his preparations; he instead sought laparoscopic surgery from Dr. Patrick Reardon, a leader in the field whose patients include Barbara Bush, the former U.S. First Lady.

Reardon discovered a four-centimetre adhesion (gluey scar tissue) at the site of the 1990 surgery that was pinning Hadfield's intestines to his abdominal wall, and the physician quickly repaired it.

Still, some doctors at NASA worried that Hadfield might suffer complications in space from Reardon's relatively new procedure, and made their thoughts known to the Multilateral Space Medicine Board, Hadfield writes. In January 2012, just 11 months before lift-off, the board asked him to submit to its "quick look" option.

Hadfield says and his wife, Helene, found the request "idiotic" because they'd researched medical literature on Reardon's procedure and found no cases of complication—and because he believed it would create more risk than it would alleviate.

"Like any surgery, the pro­cedure that was being proposed would introduce significant new risks," he writes. "I might have an adverse reaction to general anes­thetic, for instance, or I might develop an infection, or any number of surgical errors might occur—and any one of those things could then eliminate me from space flight."

If that happened, Hadfield says, the risks and complications would multiply. For his expedition to proceed, NASA would be forced to swap him out for another astronaut who couldn't possibly train in time for his duties. Moreover, he was the designated backup astronaut for a mission headed to the ISS in July, a role for which there was no immediate replacement.

So he refused, triggering what Hadfield describes as a "Kafkaesque" journey through "a bureaucratic quagmire where logic and data simply didn't count."

"Internal politics and uninformed opinions were what mat­tered," he says in the book. "Doctors who hadn't ever performed a laparoscopic proce­dure were weighing in; people were making decisions about medical risks as though far greater risks to the space program itself were irrelevant."

In a rare show of frustration, he chides the Canadian Space Agency for its "too-Canadian" reluctance to try to influence the medical review process in his favour.

Only in March, just as the Multilateral Space Medicine Board was set to rule on whether it would demand the surgery, was the crisis resolved. A single member of the Multilateral Space Medicine Board recommended an ultrasound to see if there was any new build-up of scar tissue at the site of the 2011 operation, Hadfield writes. To his enormous relief, he passed.

The result cleared the way for a mission that yanked space exploration back into the public eye: the 54-year-old's tweets and live broadcasts during his five months on the ISS turned him into a social-media phenomenon, while a video he made singing David Bowie's hit "Space Oddity" while floating around the station went supernova, garnering nearly 18 million Youtube views to date.

Hadfield retired from his position with the Canadian Space Agency shortly after returning to Earth. On Oct. 8, the University of Waterloo announced that he had accepted a position as a professor of aviation the school's sciences faculty, where he will conduct research into heart health. Specifically, he will look at why some astronauts are prone to fainting spells when they return to Earth.

Hadfield says he learned a lesson from his dispute that he took to space, comparing it to "out-of-control" tests military pilots perform on fighter jets.

"[I was] working a serious, complex problem while in freefall," he says in the book, "professionally, without losing my focus on the true goal of the mission: making sure our crew was ready for space flight whether I was going with them or not."

Join Maclean's and Chris Hadfield in Toronto on Sunday, Nov. 3 as Hadfield launches his first book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. Click here to purchase tickets, which include a signed copy of the book.

 

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Chris Hadfield on the view from above and his fear of heights

In conversation with the Canadian astronaut

by Charlie Gillis on Tuesday, October 8, 2013 12:48pm -

 

Christopher Wahl

His five-month turn aboard the International Space Station made Chris Hadfield a global celebrity, after which he retired from the Canadian space program. On the eve of the launch of his new book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, the 54-year-old recounts his wondrous journey from a farm in Ontario to command of humanity's space outpost, while sharing the keys to his success.

Q: The vivid imagery in this book conveys how intense the sensory experience of living in space must be. Do you ever dream about your experiences up there?

A: I dream about it while I'm awake. I'm not one who spends a lot of time thinking about what I dreamt last night. But it was nice this time to be able to go for so long, to not just get a taste of the experience, but to actually live it, to live there, to really absorb it and become adapted to it mentally. So now, it's like a language that I speak. It's part of how I look at things and think of things. There are little things reminding of me of it all the time. The driver on the way to this interview this morning's name was Vladimir. He's Russian, and has been in Canada over 20 years, but I immediately start talking to him in Russian and was instantly reminded of talking to [cosmonaut] Roman [Romanenko] on the space station. It was so evocative that the two experiences just sort of flowed together in my head. So, yes, in a way, I guess I dream about it all the time.

Q: You write about how much you've loved the warm winters in the southern U.S. I'm sure there'd be opportunities for you there. Why did you come back to Canada?

A: [My wife] Helene and I think Canada has solved the riddle of how to set up civilization better than just about any country on Earth. So it's not just that our passports let us come back here. We've been looking forward to it for a long time. Also—I was talking to Helene about it this morning—I haven't felt like I was grounded somewhere for a long time, just because I spent so much time on the road and living in other places. We're now in the process of being from somewhere again, which is important to me.

Q: You say you're not suffering a letdown after retiring. But for the first time, a brass ring no longer lies before you. Has that been difficult?

A: Well, the core of your question is flawed. Flying in space is not a brass ring, a palpable prize at the end of a lot of buildup. It is part of a long process.

Q: But you've wanted to be an astronaut since you were nine.

A: I think most people only become aware of a space flight while it's happening, and tend to think that's how astronauts experience it, as well—like we're athletes preparing for the Olympics. I've never seen it that way. I've done it three times and I've lived it to the fullest, but I never felt like [the flight itself] was the peak. So there's no postpartum. Maybe I'll answer the question differently in a couple of years. Since I've landed, we've been hugely busy, between getting the book finished, moving, setting up a new career and extricating myself from the old one. Maybe I just haven't had time to think about it.

Q: What's next for you?

A: I'm hoping that will be largely self-revealing. I've watched a lot of people leave the astronaut office. It's a bizarre profession and a lot of people defer having children to do it. Then, when they get to their late 40s, they realize that their kids are going to go to university [soon]. They've flown once, maybe twice, in space and realize, "Gosh, I gotta get a real job and make some money, because I've been a government employee all this time." So they rush out and go work for one of the big contactors, you know, tripling their salary. Then, after about six or nine months, they realize: "That was a big mistake, and here I am full-time working for this person I didn't give myself a chance to really know." Then they change professions. I've watched several of them bounce from job to job over the few years after they leave. I'm trying to avoid that.

Q: So what does a retired astronaut do?

A: We haven't lived in Canada for 26 years, so all of our assumptions are stale. We need to have a really good look at the opportunities, take some bridging time to allow it to happen. Lots of people want me to come speak to them, so I'll do that for a while as we get settled. But if a university asks me to come and teach part-time, that could fit well.

Q: Can you imagine a future for yourself in politics?

A: If you mean to become an elected official, I really don't think so.

Q: That answer doesn't exactly sound like a slamming door.

A: Well, you have to ask yourself, why would you want to get into politics? Is it because you want to effect change? Because you think something in your value system and in your personal set of capabilities is worth bringing? If you decide that, then what is the best way to try to change something? I think there are lots of ways to exercise ambition and accomplish things using leadership without going into elected politics. So, categorically, I have no intention of going into elected politics. None.

Q: You can understand why people ask. You became a social media star up there, especially after the Space Oddity video hit the web. To what degree was all that planned and choreographed?

A: Obviously, we set up a bunch of events. If I'm going to talk to schools, the Governor General, the Bank of Canada, those things take time to set up. But back before launch, my son Evan had just finished his M.B.A. and hadn't got a job yet. While I was in quarantine, I asked him, "If I can't properly tweet from space, would you tweet stuff for me? If I just email you a picture and some words, can you tweet it?" That was our plan at launch. I wouldn't have a lot of time, so tweeting's perfect. I take pictures, I look through my pictures, I choose a good one and then, all I really have to do is write what it meant and send it. Evan did everything else, and millions of people got to see the possibility of what we're up to there. So I was really pleased. I wish I could fly again in 10 years, so I can see whatever the next phase is.

Q: Are there stories in that book that you weren't able to share while you were part of the space program?

A: No. I made an absolute precept with this book of not making anybody look bad—there are too many good people doing great things. I don't see any margin in it. It is, however, easier to write a book when you're a private citizen than when you're a government employee, just because of standard rules.

Q: Like what?

A: Well, like the bone loss in my hips. The government goes to incredible lengths to protect my private medical data, and they've got a whole structure just to make sure no one finds out to what degree I have bone loss in my hips. I don't understand why that's even private data. I think it's important for everybody who's osteoporotic, for other astronauts, for people's understanding of what goes on [in zero gravity]. Some people are more private about their medical data, but I've been open about it all along.

Q: You talk in the book about the "power of negative thinking," which is a cheeky inversion of self-help cant. What do you mean?

A: A lot of people live in fear because they haven't figured out how you're going to react when faced with a certain set of circumstances. I've come to terms with this by looking deeply into whatever makes me fearful—what are the key elements that get the hairs up on the back of my neck—and then figuring out what I can do about it. Even if the fear-inducing event doesn't happen, you feel much more at peace because you know you have a plan. It's a learned behaviour, but I think it's an effective one. Don't ostrich it. Then, when you are inevitably faced by something, you're relying on gut instinct—not skills or planning—to pull you through. It might work, but there's a pretty good chance it won't.

Q: I have no doubt that works for you. You're an astronaut, you've got a wide field of abilities. But I'm imagining someone who gets downsized in middle age. He's been encouraged to specialize throughout his entire career.

A: I think I'm more specialized than just about anybody in the world.

Q: But specialized in so many things! This guy gets to his stage of life and realizes too late he's been, in effect, sticking his head in the sand?

A: But we've both lived the same number of years and we both had the same number of hours available to us, and was that person—is any person—thinking about what might happen this year, or what might happen in five years? How better to get myself ready for whatever might happen? You know, I'm a very good Soyuz [spacecraft] manual docking pilot. Spacewalking is an extremely complex and demanding skill, and I've become quite proficient at it. But neither of those things has any practical application. The key is to continue to analyze what may be coming up in your life, continue to get yourself ready, and don't just expect everything to go well. When things do go sour, you've got some options, and you've got an internal confidence that really helps.

Q: I was amused to learn you're afraid of heights. Is that not a fatal flaw in a test pilot?

A: It's like being afraid of sabre-toothed tigers: You ought to be, because they can kill you in a second! I've been over a million feet up, but I focus on why a thing scares me, and how I control that particular set of circumstances so that which scares me is not going to kill me. I would not want to stand on the edge of this roof above us and look down. It gives me a primal, almost uncontrollable fear—that watery feeling in the belly, where your legs are shaking and you can hardly move. But all I need to do is clip myself on [to a safety line], and I can manage that fear.

Q: Could you have done what that Red Bull guy did, parachuting from the capsule from the edge of orbit?

A: I could have done that easily. He knew it's not the height that kills you; it's the hit at the end, so he had a wonderful plan for the last 5,000 feet. The first part was just falling. Now, standing on the edge of the Half Dome in Yosemite? That takes the bottom out of my stomach.

Q: You clearly have an affinity for Russia, where you lived for two years, and for its space program. What is it that attracts you to Russian culture?

A: I have great respect for their ability to sustain a space program through 50 years, despite the foibles of politics and transient events on Earth. First, they build beautifully simple hardware. I'm a mechanical engineer, and I grew up on a farm, so I like practical hardware—somebody's elegant solution that proves itself over the long term. I also believe the key to really enjoying Russia is the language. It's a very foreign language for most North Americans—different alphabet, few cognates, the words don't sound the same. But learning it is almost like acquiring membership in a club. If you put enough time into it, if you can decode it and understand the beauty of it, then Russia looks different.

Q: How so?

A: You see Moscow not as kind of a grey, slightly rundown place of 10 or 15 million people, but instead as a 1,000-year-old piece of human civilization. The way that they honour their own culture—the history of it, the beauty of it—is so much more closely embodied in their definition of who they are than is the case in North America. We're very transient and pop, and they are very much not that way. And they're much less worried about appearances. They're hugely concerned about their inner lives. The interpersonal and the love that they have for each other, and for their civilization, is profound.

Q: Right now, the ISS seems like the last bridge between their society and ours.

A: It's huge. Think back to Mir, which was launched in '86. Western media barely even knew it existed for the first five or six years that it was there. Then suddenly, you couldn't read about it without seeing some derogatory adjective attached to it. Embattled. Archaic. Decrepit. All to make it look inferior. It's a carry-over from the Cold War—a desire to keep that big, scary, dark bear on the horizon. Look, Russians aren't perfect. Their politics are messed up, and they keep going through self-defeating economic cycles. But I have a lot of respect for Russia, and a lot of love for Russians.

Q: You were in space the day of the Boston Marathon bombings. When you're gazing on the planet from on high, what do you make of the politics and the history behind these events?

A: Hugely wrong-headed and uninformed. The trite explanation for that is, when you see Earth from space, the borders disappear. You'll be looking at Africa or Europe, and thinking back to what happened there 60 or 70 years ago, and you'll be wondering: How could that little line right there have meant anything to anybody? You can't even see it from a million feet away. But more important is that you can see that people all around the planet live more or less the same way. One of the guys on the crew put it best. He said we look like bacteria in a kitchen—we're living in these sheltered little warm spots that have a nice supply of moisture. You can look down on a city and think, hey, I know that place. But then you wait half an hour, and you're on the other side of the world, looking at a place you've never even heard of and, wow, it looks exactly the same.

So you make this link. You realize, "Those people are the same. They're trying to solve the same problems the same way. They just have their own particular set of barriers and circumstances." So it affects your response, when you hear about some idiot doing something stupid that has a negative effect on it all. You have to accept it; there are good dogs and bad dogs in life. You just wish that people could get a little more of that million-feet-away perspective.

Join Maclean's and Chris Hadfield in Toronto on Sunday, Nov. 3 as Hadfield launches his first book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. Click here to purchase tickets, which include a signed copy of the book.

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