Chris Hadfield, 64, is a Canadian astronaut who’s a veteran of three spaceflights and served as Commander of the International Space Station. He’s also been a combat fighter pilot and a test pilot, played a version of Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in space and is an author who has written books like An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, The Apollo Murders and his new second novel, The Defector
I REMEMBER…
AS A NINE-YEAR-OLD BOY I WAS GROWING UP ON A FARM AND DREAMING OF GOING TO SPACE. I watched shuttle launches, as well as Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and I imagined going to space when I looked up at all the stars in the night sky. I wish I could tell that child that his dreams would come true and that he would grow up to pilot and command spaceships.
I FLEW F-18 COMBAT FIGHTERS IN THE COLD WAR AND I WAS A TEST PILOT with the US Air Force and US Navy, even though I’m Canadian. I’ve flown about 100 different types of aeroplanes, including many jet fighters and a few propeller fighters. I’ve flown a Spitfire, F-86 Sabre, F-18, F-16 and F-4—many different, high-performance aeroplanes. In my new novel The Defector, the opening scene is an F-4 in combat. Being able to draw on my experience, as an F-18 pilot and then as a test pilot, really gave me a depth and platform to talk about it knowledgably and from the inside. Hopefully, I can really let people know what it feels like when you’re in combat or when you’re manoeuvring a plane that’s right at the edge.
I RAN A PROGRAMME THAT MADE F-18S A SAFER AND MORE CAPABLE AEROPLANE. When I was a test pilot with the US Navy, out in the fleet they were crashing the two-seat F-18s on a regular basis. They would go out of control and the only thing that would save them was the ejection seat. It was very high risk of loss of life, as well as obviously the expense of losing an air frame. The programme that me and some engineers pitched boiled down to me in the airplane deliberately putting it out of control. I was pretty sure that we were high enough and I would get it under control again and we did it and gained confidence the more we did it. We put a new sensor on the nose of the F-18s and used that information to change the flight control laws. We saved lots of aeroplanes and, I expect, some lives. It was a great programme, but it was quite a challenge to run it safely.
WHEN YOU FIRST ARRIVE IN SPACE YOU’VE RIDDEN EIGHT AND A HALF MINUTES ON AN EXTREMELY WILD, POWERFUL RIDE ON A ROCKET SHIP. However, it’s short enough that it’s more like driving a car at maximum performance on a very rough road. As soon as you ge
