Chris Hadfield Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions

Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield answers the internet's most searched questions about himself.

If you’re interested in learning more about Chris Hadfield his first book, New York Times bestseller 'An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth' has been translated into 25 different languages.

And if your children are interested, Chris's second book, 'The Darkest Dark,' is a New York Times bestselling children's book.

His website is http://www.chrishadfield.ca

- My name is Chris Hadfield,I'm doing the WIREDAutocomplete Interview.[space music]Let's begin.What Chris Hadfield, in thesearch engine, here we go.What inspired Chris Hadfieldto become an astronaut?The first people to walk on the moon.When Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrongwalked on the moon on July 20th 69,I thought, "If they coulddo that, I could do that."That inspired me.What was Chris Hadfield's education?I went to a bunch of different schools,but basically I'm a farmerand a mechanical engineerand a pilot, fighter pilot, test pilot.That's was my educationto become an astronaut.What was Chris Hadfield's first job?I grew up on a farm, but whenyou're grown up on a farmerit's not really sort of a job,it's just what you doevery day after school.My first real job was workingin a scientific shipping warehouse.When a school orderedscientific equipment,I was the guy back inthe shipping departmentthat would collect the pigfetuses or the waste scale,put 'em in a box andmail them to your school.That was my first job.What did Chris Hadfield find in space?Wow, what did I find in space?A new way to look at the world.What did Chris Hadfield,this is terrible English.What did Chris Hadfieldlearned from going blind?Well, I learned better Englishfrom this sentence here.During my first spacewalk,there was contaminationinside my space suitgot in both my eyes, blinded me.What did I learn from that?Number one, don't panic.Panic doesn't really help,especially if you're all alone in space.And the second was youneed to do a better jobof cleaning the visorof your space helmet,because it's was actually the anti-fogin the visor that got into my eyesthat made me go in blind.So remember, if you're doing a spacewalk,clean your visor really carefullyand don't let it get in your eyesand you probably won't go blind.Emerging from below, as oftenscrolls on a computer screen,these are the questionsthat begin with where.Where Chris Hadfield?Where does Chris Hadfield live?I live on earth.Wasn't always true.But right now I live inToronto, Ontario, Canada.And like it there, it's a nice city,it's well run, good place.If you get a chance to live in Toronto.Where was Chris Hadfield born?I was born about, I don't know, maybe,a couple hundred yards from the US border,right on the edge of Canada ina town called Sarnia, Ontarioin Sarnia General Hospital.August 29th, 1959, makes me a Virgo.Where is Chris Hadfield right now?On earth.I'm in Las Vegas, baby.And what happens here, falls on the floor.Where did Chris Hadfield go in space?I went around and aroundand around the world.We launch out of Florida,or actually on third flightwe launched out of Kazakhstan,just South of Russia.You go straight up for awhile,then the spaceship turns over,start going faster andfaster and faster parallelto the surface of the earth.So that the wholetrajectory of the spaceship,is to go around the world.And if you can get going17 and a half thousand miles an hour,five miles a second, 25times the speed of sound,then you'll stay inspace basically forever.You'll just coast once you get there.So, that's what I did, got inthree different rocket ships,blasted off, went aroundthe world 2650 times.So I went on a pretty amazing world tour.More than Keith Richards.Alright.Oops.All right, this one at riskof putting shadows on my facesays, when Chris Hadfield,when, when Chris Hadfield?Let's choose a verb here.When did Chris Hadfieldfirst walk in space?I first walked in spaceduring my second space flight.We were onboard Space Shuttle Endeavor.We were building theInternational Space Station.Imagine you're wearing themost uncomfortable clothesyou've ever worn, like abig snow suit or something.And gloves and a hat and bigboots, so you can hardly move.You grab onto both sides of the hatchand you sort of like maybe achick coming out of an egg.You know, you have to sortof fight your way out,but then you pull yourselfout and you're weightless.Let go with one hand and you float aroundgently the other way and suddenly,you've gone from thisclaustrophobic little dark placeto now being surrounded by eternity.Where the whole worldis silent next to you,like this big magic globe,but it's separate from you.But all around you is thethree dimensions of everything.And it's perfectly black.It's unbelievable.Like you've given birth toyourself into a whole new place.If you get a chance, go on a spacewalk.When was Chris Hadfield last space flight?Seven years ago right now.I was onboard theinternational space station.It was 2012, 2013.It was so cool 'cause, Iwas up for half a year,so we went halfwayacross the solar system.Like we went from one sideof the sun to the otherwhile I was onboard the ship.Pretty neat, watch thewhole world like swap ends.What was winter in the Northernhemisphere, became spring.We got to watch thesnow and everything moveand things start turninggreen the time I was up there.Okay, when will, when will ChrisHadfield, drum roll please,get out of space?I don't even know whatthat question means.Maybe people out theresearching on Google,maybe they think I'm still in space.I'm still spaced out.Well, no, I've been back forseven years and happily so.There's no choices, we'reall in space all the time.Where would I go?Spaces all around us.Why Chris Hadfield?Why is Chris Hadfield a hero?He's not.Why is Chris Hadfield important to Canada?I was the first doing several things.I was the first Canadianto do a spacewalk.I was the first Canadianto command a space ship.I was the first one touse the big robot arm,and if you're Canadian,you're really paying attentionyou'll notice the name of therobot arm, is the Canadarm.So there is this great bigarm, with Canadian flags on it,out in space, being operated by a Canadianwith a Canadian flag on ashoulder for the first time.Great, big, ridiculously Canadian moment.So I think that's whyI'm important to Canada.Why did Chris Hadfield retire?Because I got old.Look at my hair.Because I was nevergonna fly in space again.And once you've done allthe things you should doin astronauts it's timeto go do something else.Why is Chris Hadfield Space Oddity?An odd phraseology but,I did a version of David Bowie'sclassic tune Space Oddity,which was a play onthe word Space Odyssey.And I played it on guitar andrecorded on the space stationand lots of people have seen it.It's actually a really beautiful song.And David Bowie loved my version of it,which was a huge compliment.He said really nicethings, which was great.Why is Chris Hadfield under the ocean?This you may not know.I lived at the bottom of theocean for like two weeks.Because living at the bottomof the ocean, inside a habitat,it's sort of like livingin space, inside a habitat.It's a good way to trainfor the technical stuff,but also psychologically.If you can't immediatelycome up to the surface,if you have to solve allyour problems yourself,it's not a bad psychologicaltraining groundfor being an astronaut.So, if you see ChrisHadfield under the ocean,that's probably why.What Chris Hadfield?Okay, let's choose a word.What is Chris Hadfield famous for?I think I'm most famous forstrangely enough, playing music.I mean, I'm an Astronaut,I've done spacewalks,I was NASA's Directorof Operations in Russia,I intercepted Soviet bombersoff the Coast of North Americaduring the height of the Cold War.But I think I'm most famousfor playing guitar andsinging Space Oddity in orbit.I made a lot of effort tocommunicate with peopleusing social media duringmy third space flight.I made a bunch of videos.If I go into any school around the world,they've been watching thosevideos sort of as partof their science classes.The ease of Twitter and suchallowed me to communicatewith so many people around the world.Almost on a one on one basis.What is Chris Hadfield favorite color?Blue.Sort of a sky blue.It's a nice place to be.Color of my eyes.What awards has Chris Hadfield won?I've won a lot of awards.In grade eight, I won thepublic contest in my school.In grade five, I won the posture contest.I was also the top test pilotat the US Air Force Test Pilot Schooland top test pilot in the US Navy.The award that actuallymeant the most to me was,as I was a test pilot, I didthis really complicated testto put a hydrogen burning enginefor a hypersonic airplaneout on the wingtip of an F18and I presented at the Societyfor Experimental Test Pilots,big annual conferenceand I won best projectfor being a test pilotfor the whole world.And that kind of opened the doorsto get chosen as an astronaut.Your life sort of trundleslong and hit a big watershedand after that everythingafter is sort of the resultof one moment in time.That might've been theone I'm most proud of,one that had the biggestimpact on my life anyway.What is Chris Hadfield's,it's a little tiny one,what is Chris Hadfields, Oh, IQ?Aahh, I don't know.But I actually, when I was a teenager,I was kind of, you know,insecure like everybodyand I wanted to join Mensa,the organization of peoplethat had high enough IQs.And it turns out whenI did the Mensa test,my IQ was high enough to join Mensa.But then once I joined Mensa,I didn't really know what to do next.But at the time it seemed important.All right, what languagesdoes Chris Hadfield speak?I speak English.And then I'm from Canada andso we teach French in Canada.[speaking French]And then as an astronaut,I wanted to be able tofly a Russian spaceshipand work with Russians.And so, [speaking Russian].I speak a little bit ofRussian, a little bit of German,but I've kind of forgotten all of it.How to eat in space Chris Hadfield?Well, your food floats for one thing,so you don't need a plate,like a plate would be useless.So what you do is you get your package,you either make it cold or hotand there's just likethis little easy bake ovenwhere you can warm up thepackage, you can't really cook.But it might be dehydrated foodand then you slide it over a needleand you dial and you push a buttonand it fills up the packagewith the right amount of water.Now you've got yourpackage and you mix it upand you Velcro it to the wall, let it sit,soak up the water and thenyou carefully slit it open,'cause if you open it quick,you'll get like a littlespoogy stuff all over the room.So you don't want that.So you carefully open, sonothing comes flying out,'cause nothing's gonna fall to the floor.And then you get a spoon,spoon is a great utensil.And you want a long spoonso it can go all the wayto the back of the package.And then you eat everythingout of one package.You don't like have peas andmeat and potatoes and corn.You just eat all of your peas firstand they have to be cream peasso they don't float all over.Then you ball that up super tight'cause you got to get rid of your garbage,put it in the garbage andthen you open your next thing,which might be, I don't know, a tortilla.So that's how we eat in space.One thing at a time, in it's package,it's sorta like, I don'tknow, eating on the busor eating on a camping trip or something.Here's a funny thing aboutbeing in space, and that is,because there's no gravity, that meansthat the stuff in your noseand your sinuses never drains.So it's sort of like youalways have a head cold.You can't really taste your food as much,you know, when you're like this,your food all sort of tastes bland,'cause you're not smelling it,you're not getting it into all of your sensors.So food in space, tastes sort of bland.And the food that has thestrongest spice naturally in it,is shrimp cocktail, becausewe have had cocktail sauce on,which is, you know, a lot of horseradish.You wouldn't think youwould have shrimp cocktailon a spaceship, with anice red hot sauce on it,you bite into it, it'sgot that nice crunchand then you get thatsurge of eye watering,horseradish cocktail sauceand for a moment or two,it clears your sinuses.So my favorite spacefood was shrimp cocktail.How to sleep in space, Chris Hadfield?First you have to decide when, right?'Cause you're going aroundthe world 16 times a day.So when is it night?It's night every, you know, 45 minutes.Of course, you're gonna geta sunrise every 90 minutes.So you have to cover all the windowsfor the sun doesn't get in your eyes.And then you float intoyour little sleep podand there's a sleeping bagtied to the wall with a string.You float in carefully, youfloat into your sleeping bag,it's got arm holes,and then you could zipup your sleeping bag,and now you're just sort of floatinglike a fish and aquariuminside your sleeping bag.You pull the little doorsclosed on your asleep pod,you turn the fan down as low as you can,you don't wanna suffocate,but make it quiet.And then you shut off thelight and then you relaxevery muscle in your body.When your arms floatup and your knees floatand your waistbands andyour head comes forward,and your whole body's perfectly relaxedand you don't need a pillow andyou never have to roll over,your shoulder doesn't get sore.It's like the most calmand comfortable sleepyou've ever had in your life.I think if we startflying tourists in space,it's gonna be feeling like the space spa,the best sleep you've ever had.How to meet Chris Hadfield?Well let's see, I speakall over the world.I'm constantly traveling,I've met millions of people.I don't just hide.So if you wanna meet me,you could go to my website,chrishadfield.ca I think,and see when I'm gonna be somewhere.Or you could send me a note.We could e-meet.I'm on Twitter and Facebookand Instagram and such.Or you could write me a nice letter.I'd love to get a letter from you.And if you draw me a really nice picture,I'll stick it up on my fridge.How long was Chris Hadfieldcommander of theInternational Space Station?About two or three months.We take turns.And we go up in a little spaceshipor the Russian on the Soyuz,pretty soon we'll be going up and downon American ships built byBoeing and built by a SpaceX.But, when I went, we took turns,there were new crews every three months.So if you think about it,we rotate who's in chargeevery two or three months.Okay, this is a big question,at least you know, physically.How, did Chris Hadfieldcontribute to space exploration?Well, when you're the firstto do things, people notice.Because if say for example,there'd never been a Canadianwho was the mission specialist,which is like a fullyintegrated crew memberon the space shuttle.I was the first Canadian.So that was sort of a big contributionfor the 37 million peoplethat live in Canada.Did a bunch of researchwhile I was up there.I help run the 200 experimentson the space station.I help build two space stations.That's kind of a you know,with your hands kind of contribution.But I was NASA's Directorof Operations in Russia,so I helped the space programof Roscosmos of Russiaand NASA of the UnitedStates, work and get along.So I contributed thereand I served as an Astronaut for 21 years.Every single day for 21 years.So that was a big contribution as well.This question is unnamed,it just has my name.I'm can open it from rightto left just for variety.Okay.The first Canadian in space,and now we have to choose the modifier,was, [laughing],was Chris Hadfield thefirst Canadian in space?No.The first Canadian space was Marc Garneau.The second was Roberta Bonder.The third was Steve MacLean, I was fourth,fourth Canadian in space, very proud.Did Chris Hadfield walk on the moon?I never got the chance.And we haven't had anybody walkin the moon since I was 12.Soon we will.There are astronauts training right nowand we're building hardwareright now for peopleto not just walk in the moonbut actually start settling on the moon.Start living there, justlike we live in Antarcticaor some of the moreremote parts of the world.So it's happening.So maybe, I'll still get a chanceto do what I dreamed aboutwhen I was a little boy.Okay, here's the next question.Go to space with, who did,who did Chris Hadfield go to space with?I went to space with Russians and Germanand Americans, I think.But that's all just kind of arbitrary.I went to space with people from earth.Okay, one more questionhere in the unnamed sectionand that is, is Chris Hadfield okay?Yeah, thanks for asking, I'm okay.Part of what happens in space though is,a lot of things degrade in your body.You lose part of your skeleton,your muscles sort of waste away'cause there's no gravitythat you have to fightso your body gets lazy,your heart gets smaller,your balance system gets confused'cause there's no gravity.Some astronauts in fact, their eyeballsbecause of the change inthe internal fluid pressuresof your body, theireyeballs change shapes.So they see not as wellafter they'd been in space.But I've been back fromspace six or seven years nowand my bones are dense,my muscles are strong,my eyeballs are okay.Everything seems to be all right.My balance system is good.So yeah, I'm okay.Thanks.So that's a lot of questions about me,how about, do you have anyquestions about, I don't know,astronauts in general?All right, oh, cool.What astronaut?Here we go, what are therequirements to be an astronaut?That may be changing right now.Because with Elon Musk andRichard Branson and Jeff Bezosand other companies trying to allowanybody who can buy aticket to be an astronaut,or at least to fly in space,I think that'll be good.But up until now youhad to kind of really beready to fly a spaceship.So if you wanna fly a spaceship,what are the requirements?Well you need to understandcomplicated things like,orbital mechanics.How do you maneuver in space?How do you, how do you makethings accurately work?How does a space suit workor the physiology of the human bodyor a little understanding of solar physicsand rocket propulsion systemsand communication systemsand being able to reprogram the computers.And plus it's aninternational space stationso learn to speak some other languages.So, there's a lot of requirements,but the fundamental threethings you need are number one,a healthy body thatfits in your space suit.So not too big, not too small and healthy.Number two, the proven abilityto learn complicated stuff.So how do you know somebodycan learn complicated stuff?Choose people withmultiple university degreeswho've proven that they canget a high score on a testor do original research.And then the third peoplewho can make good decisions.So we choose people who havehad a complicated jobs like,test pilots and medicaldoctors, life or death,the people have run programs.In my case, to become an astronaut,I didn't really know what to do.I'm from a country that doesn'thave very many astronauts,but I looked at theastronauts of the worldand the cosmonauts, and I thought, "Okay,"everybody needs a university education."So I went to four different universities.And I did it all in technicalmechanical engineering.And I thought, "Okay, I look at, you know,"Neil and Buzz andSally Ride and everybody"and they have good, healthy bodies."So okay, I need to keep my body in shape."So think about what I eatand exercise a little bit"and keep myself strong."And then I thought,astronauts fly in space.You know, that's a verb,I can learn to fly.I just have to do it.So I started learning tofly when I was a teenager.I joined the Air Cadets,they taught me to fly glidersand then powered airplanesand then I had joinedthe Royal Canadian Air Forceand flew a bunch of airplanes,eventually flew fighters andso I was a CFA team pilot,and then I went to Test Pilot Schoolwith the US Air Force and thenI was a Test Pilot with the US Navy.Then Canada had an astronaut recruitment,and they hired me to be an astronaut.So I guessed right, when I was a kid.What is astronaut ice cream made of?You've probably tried astronaut ice cream.You bite into it and it sort ofmelts in your mouth and crumbles.It's like a block of cotton candy.I think astronaut ice creamis mostly made of sugar,like whipped sugar.The secret is we don't actuallyeat astronaut ice creamin space, it's not reallyastronaut ice cream,it's science center ice cream.Because if you think about it,when you bite into thatastronaut ice cream,it makes crumbs, becauseit's that hard, brittle,sugary stuff and thosecrumbs would go everywherewithout gravity, they'd be inyour eyes, you breathe 'em,they'd be in the filters.So it would be bad space food.What is astronauts centrifuge?When you fly a rocket ship,because it's acceleratingthrough the atmosphere so hardwith the big engines pushing you,you get push back in your chairand you sort of get crushedby the force of this rocket.F equals MA, right?Force equals mass times acceleration.When you got that bigforce in your a mass,so you're getting accelerated.And you feel that accelerationis like multiples of your own weight.And the big rocket motorscan crush you in your chairwith like four or five times your weight.And when you come back into the atmosphereand we're letting the air slow us down,you can get crushed likewith eight times your weight,which is really brutal.But how do you get ready for that?Well, what we do is we get ina little simulated spaceshipand that's on the end of this huge armand it spins us aroundand around and arounduntil we're getting pinnedagainst the outside of this little thing.And then we have to operate the spaceshipand show we can do whatwe're supposed to do.This thing is called a Centrifuge,depending on how you operateyour capsule coming home.If you mess it up, then you're gonna pulla whole bunch of G, you'regonna crushed a lot,and you'll have to wear theresult of your mistakes.So it's a really goodreinforcing place to train.What kind of music do astronauts like?Astronauts come from everywhere.We like all the music there is.We actually disagree about music onboard.This astronaut likes musicthat has a melody that stays in your headand words that mean something.And there's lots ofastronauts who are musicians.We keep musical instrumentsup on the space station.There's a guitar upthere, there is a ukulele,there's a keyboard powered by batteries.So when we're relaxing in the eveningor when it's somebody'sbirthday or when it's a holiday,then we get together withthe instruments on boardand play music, just like you do on earth.The next questions arewhere, where astronaut.Where, I think it's gonnasay do, no, where is.Where is astronaut training?Astronaut training for the United Statesis primarily at the JohnsonSpace Center in Houston, Texasor just outside of Houston.And then in Russia it's at the,Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center.But then we also train in Canada,at the Canadian Space Agency,on the outskirts of Montreal.And we train in Europe, in Germanyat the European Astronauts Center,which is just outside of Cologne, Germany.And then also in Japan,'cause it's aninternational space station,so everyone's got their own trainingand that one is in a littlescientific training towncalled Tsukuba, all around the planet.Where astronauts feelthe atmosphere begin?That's cool.You're floating weightless in space.You turn your spaceship around backwards,'cause you're going around theworld in this perfect circle.And you fire your big enginefor like maybe four minutes,and it changes yourperfectly circular orbitinto kind of like an oval,where there's a low part and a high part.And that low part of your oval,starts to just touch thetop of the atmosphere.Like if you stuck your handout the window of the carand not going too fast,you can just feel a littlebit of air pressure,but you're going so fast, you'regoing five miles a second.So even a tiny little bit of error,really starts to slow you down.And when you feel thetop of the atmosphere,the only way you can really feel it like,is if you hold your checklistup and you let go of it,and instead of justfloating in front of you,it now starts to gentlyfall towards the floor.Everything starts tobehave like a feather.And you're still kind of justhardly sitting in your seatthat you're strapped into.With every passing second,you start to see the effectsof gravity more and more.And we sorta reallycall atmospheric entry,about 400000 feet up.We call that Entry Interface.That's where you start tofeel the atmosphere begin.And if you look out thewindows or the spaceship,you can see that it's starting to get hot.And as you come in itgets hotter and hotterand there's flames pouring all around,until if you can imaginethat you were somehowinside a blast furnace andthen the red and yellow flamesare ripping all around your shipas that huge deceleration is causingall the friction and pressure and drag.That's what the atmospheredoes to you a little later.But the early wispyatmosphere, 400000 feet.Where astronauts hang out?At the space bar.Standard joke.Well, we have to live nearour training equipment,so most astronauts live closeto the Yuri GagarinCosmonaut Training Center,in Star City Russia orthe Johnson Space Centerin Houston, Texas.There's a few obvious favorite placesnearby to those space centerswhere we go in the evening.There was one classic called The Outpost,which was close to theJohnson Space Center.And it had all sorts of sortof contraband paraphernalia.Old astronaut pictures and signed picturesand stuff people hadbrought back from spaceand stuck to the wall in this crappy, old,fire trap of a building.Eventually the fire inspector said,"Now we need to be grown up about this."And The Outposts got torn down.But, for a lot of years,that's where the astronautshung out, at The Outpost.These next questions bypopular demand, start with why.Why astronauts never cry in space?Well, it's not because we're not sad.Actually sometimes youcry 'cause you're happy.And what I've found actually,it's such a rich experiencethat my emotions were closerto the surface the whole time.I found myself laughingand crying way more oftenthan I do on earth.But you can't really cry without gravity.Gravity pushes the weight ofthe tears down out of your eye.Well without gravity, then the tearsare not gonna get drained out of your eye,in fact, they're justgonna stay in your eye,until you can't really see properly.And then you need a hanky orsomething to dry your eyes.If you watch the movie gravity, I think,when Sandra Bullock was crying, somehowher tears were propelledacross the spaceship.Her tears were squirting across the room.I don't know anybody who cries like that.In space tears don't fall.Why astronaut not use pencil in space?That's not true, we do,we use pencils in space all the time.Pencils don't care where gravity is,you can write up, you can write down,you can write sideways.So we use pencils all the time.We use a grease pencils,'cause grease pencils are really tough.We use Sharpies, Sharpies work great.Ballpoint pens don'twork too well because,you know, take a pen andwrite upside down for a while.If your pen won't write upsidedown like a lot of them do,then it's not gonna be a good pen to usein a place where there's no gravity.I don't have a Sharpie, but ifI did, I would cross out not.Why astronauts use pencil in space?A little bit of a caveman phrasing but,we use pencil in spacebecause pencil work.All right, why do astronautsexercise in space?Being in space, is theultimate lazy existence.It's the ultimate placefor a couch potato.You don't have to fight gravity.You don't have to lift a finger.You don't have to hold your head up.Everything just floats.Nothing sags.It's a great place to be.But, as a result of the factthat you don't have to fight gravity,you can be super lazy.Even your heart gets lazy,'cause it doesn't need to lift the bloodfrom the bottom of your feetall the way up to the top of your head.It just has to push itthrough your blood vessels.Your heart actually gets smaller,your muscles would waste away.You wouldn't have this bigskeleton fighting gravity.So your skeleton would dissolve.So we have to exercise in space,because we're coming home again.And we don't wanna come backas like, you know, jellyfish.So we exercise about twohours a day on the spaceship.We have a stationary bicycle, no seat,'cause you don't need a seat,it's more like I don't know,a unicycle without a seat.And then we have atreadmill that we can run onand there are big elasticsthat we wear on our hips and our shouldersto hold us down on the treadmillso we can run and pound away.And then we have a resistive machine.You can't lift weights'cause you're weightless.So between the treadmill and the bicycleand the resistiveexercise two hours a day,you wanna be conscious of your own sweatwhen you're weightless.And so what we do iswe keep a towel nearby,and if you're good you can take the toweland just floated therein space next to you.And you work out for a whileuntil you're getting sweatyand then you dry the sweat off.And so your towel becomes sortof disgusting after a while.And then you just Velcrothe towel to the walland the sweat evaporates out of it,it becomes humidity inside the spaceship,that's collected in the dehumidifierand it's turned back intodrinking water again onboard.Your sweat becomes whatyou drink the next day.Just so long as you have a good purifier,it works all right.I came home the sameweight as when I launched,but with 20% less fat.So 20% more muscle, so it was good,came back kind of ripped, it was okay.And my cardiovascular was good,but I didn't keep the bone density up.The bone density in myhips and my upper femurI lost about eight and ahalf percent of my bone,which is a lot.And so you run a bigrisk of breaking your hipwhen you get back, untilyour body goes, whoa,I'm back on earth and startsto build dense bones again.Why do astronauts go to the moon?Well, so far, only 12 astronautshave walked on the moon.24 astronauts have gone to the moon.A lot of them just orbitedit, they didn't walk.It's not like a lot ofastronauts have gone to the moon.But why do astronauts go to the moon?We went because in May of 1961,President John F.

Kennedystood up and said,"We choose to go to the moon."That's why we went.It was a form of Cold War betweenthe United States and the Soviet Union.It was proof that we could.It was to challenge the wholeindustrial capabilityof the United States,like why climb Everest?Challenge yourself, see if you can do it,make it part of who you are.But now that we've done it,why go back to the moon?I think now it's justlike all exploration.First prove that you can do it,and then make it partof the human experience.Eventually we'll go to the moon to stayand live, just like everywhere else.Why do astronauts train underwater?How do you simulate being weightless?I mean, sitting here in this chair,I'm being crushed down all the time.So it's a lousy simulationof weightlessness.Now, we could all ride inthe back of an airplaneand have the airplane pushover and have us all sort offloat for a second in the backor if you've got theairplane going like this,you could float formaybe 20 or 30 seconds.And we do that 'cause it's goodfor little short experiments.But if you really wanna trainlike for an eight hour spacewalk,you can't do it in little 22nd segments.So we decided a long timeago, let's train underwaterand we use the buoyancy of the waterand then the weight ofthe suit to balance out.And then it's sorta like being weightless.It's not, of course,'cause if you go upside down in the water,the blood still rushes to your headand you have the drag of the water.Moving through the water, is way differentthan moving throughthe emptiness of space.It's like you imagine how biga normal Olympic swimming pool is,and then make it 45 feet deep.That's what the space stationswimming pool training pool is like.We call it the NeutralBuoyancy Laboratory.All right.How, how astronauts,how many astronautshave walked on the moon?Well, it started with a Neil and Buzz.It ended with a HarrisonSchmitt and Gene Cernan.So that's four and therewere eight others in between.Apollo 11, 12, not 13,'cause they had problemson the way to the moon, 14, 15, 16 and 17.So 12 human beings havewalked on the moon.Brave guys.How astronaut communicate in space?We talk to each otheron board the space ship,and people are from all over the world,so you have to choose a common language.Majority of the internationalspace station was built by,English speaking people andRussian speaking people.So onboard, we speak primarily English,but lots of Russian too.Sort of in a mixture of both.[speaking Russian]So I had to learn to speakRussian 'cause I was a memberof the crew on board the space station.And their cosmonauts equivalentlylearned to speak English.But that's just amongst ourselves,we have to talk to earth.So here's what you do.You grab the microphonein the space stationand you push the littletransmit button on the wall.And your voice, goes through the air,to a little microphone on the wall.The microphone turns itinto an electric signalthat then goes through thewires to a little digital thingthat turns it into a digital signal,and then that goes outsideof the ship to a big antennaand we send it up to ageostationary satellite20 or 2000 miles away from the earthand it collects that signal from usand then redirects it downto a great big dish antennasomewhere on the planet,like the ones in New Mexico.And then they collect thatlittle digital faint signaland then they take that digital signal,send it through wiresacross the United States.and it gets to the Johnsonspace center in Houston, Texas,where there's another little machine,that takes the digitalsignal and turns it back intosort of a analog signal, andthen it comes through a wireup to a little speaker,that shakes the same waythat microphone did on the space stationand moves the air moleculesand they come acrossand goes to someone ear and they hear you.How long that takes dependson how far away we are.Sometimes we're on theother side of the world.Radio waves go basicallyat the speed of light,186000 miles a second.But that's still, youknow, 186000 miles is,the world is 25000 miles around,so if you've gotta go all the way outto 22000 and back againand maybe even twice,it can take a second or two.So when I phoned my wife,from the space station,it would go through all of those linksand then get, you know, throughthe Houston telephone systemand it would ring on her phone.But the delay was so long,that she'd pick it upand she'd go, "Hello."And I go, "Hello."But by the time she saidhello and it got to me,and I said hello back to her,it might be three secondsand she always thoughtit was like a sales calland she'd hang up on me.So she actually got the numbers from NASA,so that instead of it comingup as some unknown number,it would say space.So her phone would sayspace, "Oh spaces calling."And then she'd wait for me to answer.The next question is howastronaut come back to earth?When you say how do you get back to earth,the real question is how do you slow down?You don't wanna hit the worldat 17 and a half thousand miles an hour.We don't have enough fuelto just like fire ourrocket and slow down.We couldn't bring that much fuel with us.So we just use friction.We use the drag of theair to slow us down.We just start to fall into the atmosphere,and then once we're in theatmosphere, it catches usand then we fly the spaceshipas carefully as we canto not have too muchdrag or too much heat,big ass is all the way downto let ourselves get aligned.And then when we get close to the earth,if you're a spaceship haswings, like the space shuttle,then you could land it on a runway.But if your spaceshipis just a little capsulelike a gumdrop, then it wouldjust shmuck into the world,so we have a great big parachuteor maybe two or three parachutes.And then you can land in thewater, which isn't too hard.You've done a bellyflop, water can be hard,but water is a little moreforgiving than dirt or rock.So you can land yourspaceship in the waterand then run the risk and it's sinking.Or you can have it land on land,and if you're gonna land onland, you can use airbagson the bottom and that'swhat Boeing is doing now,or you can have little rocketsthat just before you hit the ground,they go [making rocketengine sounds] and fire,so that it slows you down justbefore you hit the ground.And that's what we didin my third space flightin the Soyuz has littleretro rockets to cushion you.or as the Russians calledthem, soft landing rockets.It's like Greenland orthe Cape of good hope.You don't believe the,you know, the sales pitch.It's a pretty rough landing.All right, last questions.How do astronauts poop?I don't think you're asking how we poop,I think it's how we use the toilet.We poop like everybody.Okay, I'm gonna getgraphic here for a second.How do you know when youhave to poop on earth?It's actually because of theweight of the poop inside youtells you, "Hey, it's time to poop."You know how sometimes you'relying in bed and you're okay,but when you standup, you go,"Wow, I really got to poop."Well, if you're weightless,then your body'snot gonna tell you it's time to poop.So you almost have tolearn this new sort offullness symptom that tellsyou it's time to poop.You're counting on gravity'cause gravity's gonnapull it away from you.And without gravity, evenwhen you're done pooping,the poops just gonna staysort of sticking to you.So we wear a rubber glovesometimes you have to like,physically separate thepoop from your body.But then taking the place of gravityto pull the poop down intothe toilet is airflow.We have air pulled down into the toilet,its got fans in it.And that works for the pee as well.So when you want to poopon the space station,then you wait till it'syour turn in the toilet,'cause there's a limited numberof toilets on a spaceship,two for six people.You enter the toilet,we have it sort of likea little closed off area,take your pants off completelybecause you don't wantthem floating aroundwhen you're on the toilet.And then you sit on thetoilet and you can eitherhook your toes under some toe loops,so that you don't float off the toiletor on the space shuttle wehad sort of like a littleseatbelt thing that clamp like,imagine wearing a seatbeltso you don't float off your toilet but,you don't wanna float offthe toilet part way through,it'd be a mess.Then you turn the toilet on,[making buzzing sounds]loudest thing on the spaceship'cause of all those big fansto pull the air down into the toilet.And then you pee and poopjust like you do everywhere.And the pee goes down into a sewage systemthat has purifiers and filtersand gets turned back intodrinking water again,just like on earth except,it's not quite as personal on earth.And then your poop dough, goes downand gets pulled inside a tank.It looks like a big milkbottle on the space station.When you're done, we use wet wipes'cause you don't have a sewage system,so you don't have to use toilet paper.Get yourself nice and cleaneverything goes in thereand then it goes down inside the toilet,and then you clean up for the next person.You put the lid on the toilet.And when the milk can iscompletely full of poop,then we seal it with these great bigknurled knob dogs on the topso that none of the smell will come out.Then we store it down insort of a cold storage areain this station.And then when one of theunmanned ships comes up,we get all the food and suppliesand scientific equipment,and then we fill itwith all of our garbage,including, our solid waste or our poop.And we seal that up andthen when it undocks,it's separates from the stationand we fire it down into the atmosphereand then it burns up in the atmosphere.So the next time youwish on a shooting star,think about maybe what you're looking at.I'm Chris Hadfield,thank you for being part of myWIRED Autocomplete exercise.I hope you learned a fewthings about space flightand maybe a little bit aboutChris Hadfield, Astronaut.