The real space oddity, Chris Hadfield, is down-to-Earth

NEW YORKWhat do you do after youve achieved the ultimate goal of your avocationnot once, but three times?Thats the question facing Chris Hadfield, who capped 25 years of NASA service by commanding both the International Space Station and an audience of millions on YouTube and Twitter. Hadfield gave a partial answer recentlyduring a public talk at the American Museum of Natural History: get as many people as possible to understand the experience and try to use that to keep the public supporting a program of space exploration.

Hadfield may be an unassuming looking manhes got nothing like the imposing build of astronaut and former football playerLeland Melvinbut you dont get sent to space three times without having an imposing set of talents. He saidthat, in addition to the expected job skills, he spent time in a Texas emergency room, stitching up and intubating people as part of the preparations to handle anything that might come up while in space. And millionssaw his musical and photographic skills on display since.

Hadfield took the audience on a single trip to space, stitched together from the three he took. He switched back and forth among them to find the most compelling story (the Shuttle starred for liftoff, Soyuz for landing). As part of this theatrical trip, he brought astronauts back down to Earth and off the pedestal we sometimes place them on. When discussing what meal should start a day that would end with him either floating weightless or dead, he said he was told eat something creamy, because youre going to be seeing it again the same day. And you might as well make it colorful. The additional advice? Add some catsup.

The first items of NASA-issued launch clothing Hadfieldhad to put on were a pair of black socks and what he called a big boy diaper. The less-than-imposing image was made complete by the fact that Johnson & Johnson used to put pink and blue astronauts on them at the time.

By the time he was ready to be put into his flight suit, however, he was in the same room where some of his heroes, Armstrong and Aldrin, sat in the same chairs. And as Hadfieldwas driven out to the Shuttle, he watched everyone else driving away, fleeing the impending explosion that would hopefully end up controlled and pointed in the same direction.

Hadfield provided a great description of getting to orbit, noting that going up isnt good enough, because youd simply fall down the way you came. Instead, you have to also move sideways fast enough that you perpetually fall down over the horizon. That means reaching a speed of five miles a secondfast enough to make it from New York to LA in nine minutes.

In the Shuttles case, that means having access to something like 80 million horsepower, burning 12 tons of fuel a second. Some of that came from the solid rocket boosters, which he said you cant shut off and cant throttle. When they get lit, youre going somewhere, thats for sure. The main engines, in contrast, are very smooth. Once they're above the atmosphere, they can generate so much acceleration that they have to be throttled down to avoid tearing the Shuttle apart.

Its amazing, but Hadfield wasnt impressed. Its a stupid way to get to space. Were going to look back 100 years from now and think what a stupid thing.

Weightlessness also had its prosand cons. This talk would be way more fun if we were all weightless, Hadfield said before describing its liberating effects, including its tendency to liberate your lunch. Youd do a thousand summersaults and then everyone would throw up. Weightlessness even adds an interesting twist to that. NASA provides standard-issue barf bags, but without gravity to hold the contents in them, the barf actually hits the bottom and rebounds right back out. So the bags come equipped with a cloth to clean your face off afterwards.

Hadfield talked about the packed schedule of scientific experiments that astronauts run through on the International Space Station, showing pictures of experiments in progress. As an example, he shared how a flame burns in low gravity (hot air cant rise, so theres no convection, and flames end up oxygen starved). Hadfieldalso discussedhis two space walks, showing video of his first exit from the station. That clearly shows him stopping to soak in the sight of it all while halfway out the airlock. The world on one side, the bottomlessness of the Universe on the otheryoure in the Universe with the world.

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The real space oddity, Chris Hadfield, is down-to-Earth