When Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk was strapped inside a tiny Soyuz capsule on his way to the International Space Station in May 2009, his mind drifted back to a movie he saw in his youth.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is a scene with a shuttle craft from Earth carrying an international crew approaching an orbiting space station. Strauss's Blue Danube waltz is playing in the background.

"Here I was doing something very similar to what I saw in that movie 20 or 30 years ago, so I felt like the world was unfolding as it should and also that I was very fortunate to be doing this," Thirsk recalled recently.

Thirsk, the first Canadian to take part in a long space mission, was looking back at his own experience in anticipation of Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's launch for the ISS today.

"It's a once-in-lifetime opportunity to fly up to the station," Thirsk says. "Not very many Canadians have the chance to do that. I felt very grateful."

It is a pretty select club those who have lived aboard the 12-year-old ISS, in its orbit roughly 400 kilometres above the Earth. Hadfield, in fact, will become its first Canadian commander in March.

Thirsk remembers every moment of his "wonderful experience" with pride.

When he floated through the hatch to enter the station, other crew members were waiting, their cameras flashing.

"It felt like I was entering inside a Salvador Dali painting because the station was just so surreal compared to the spacecraft simulators that I'd trained in for the previous two and a half years."

Simulators are orderly and clean. The space station less so.

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What is it like to live on the International Space Station?