Chris Hadfield quotes
Born
29 August 1959, Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.
Occupation
Astronaut, engineer.
Chris Hadfield is a Canadian retired astronaut, engineer, and former Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot. The first Canadian to walk in space.
You can get claustrophobia and agoraphobia – a fear of wide, open spaces – simultaneously on a spacewalk.
– Chris Hadfield
As an astronaut, especially during launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes.
– Chris Hadfield
What I like to do when I get to a new place is buy local music early on and listen to it while we’re driving around. I think it helps explain and illuminate the culture of where you are if local music is playing.
– Chris Hadfield
Nothing focuses your mind quite like flying a jet. That’s one reason NASA requires that astronauts fly T-38s: it forces us to concentrate and prioritize in some of the same ways we need to in a rocket ship.
– Chris Hadfield
The world, when you look at it, it just can’t be random. I mean, it’s so different than the vast emptiness that is everything else, and even all the other planets we’ve seen, at least in our solar system, none of them even remotely resemble the precious life-giving nature of our own planet.
– Chris Hadfield
Our role is to develop techniques that allow us to provide emergency life-saving procedures to injured patients in an extreme, remote environment without the presence of a physician.
– Chris Hadfield
The communities and countries best at using energy to optimize a microclimate for human life are also the ones whose people have the longest average lifespans. Canada, Sweden, and Iceland – places with inhospitable winter weather – are frontrunners in sustaining human health and life.
– Chris Hadfield
I’ve been lucky enough to fly to space twice.
– Chris Hadfield
I’ve put a lot of my life into making it possible to fly in space at all.
– Chris Hadfield
I’ve had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.
– Chris Hadfield
So without that Canadian invention we were grounded. And so that was a really important and key part of the mission and Canadians should take real pride in it.
– Chris Hadfield
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.
– Chris Hadfield
It’s a really big deal to do a spacewalk. It’s much riskier than staying indoors. It’s complex. It uses up a lot of the precious resources onboard. It uses up oxygen. It uses up carbon dioxide scrubbers.
– Chris Hadfield
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.
– Chris Hadfield
You could look at something a hundred times from space, but the next time you come around the world, suddenly it’s very different and gorgeous-looking, just because of the change of weather or the angle of the sun.
– Chris Hadfield
Cynicism is the easiest of all reactions, right? But it’s also so disappointing and self-defeating.
– Chris Hadfield
Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it’s starting a new business, whether it’s leaving home, whether it’s getting married, or whether it’s flying in space.
– Chris Hadfield
If you don’t like airline food, you’ll probably have the same impression of space station food. I would not fly to space for the food.
– Chris Hadfield
I’ve had a chance to see something that is way outside everybody else’s frame of reference and gives a perspective that is very different from everyone else’s.
– Chris Hadfield
No aeroplane you’ve ever gotten into had less than thousands of flights before they took their first passenger. Because vehicles are unsafe at first.
– Chris Hadfield
When you look out the window of a spaceship, you see entire countries, vast swaths of continents. One turn of the head covers what once took thousands of years to traverse at ground level.
– Chris Hadfield
Just taking risks for risk’s sake, that doesn’t do it for me. I’m willing to take risks that I think are worth it, and I’ve worked so hard to make sure that I survive.
– Chris Hadfield
For whatever reason, I decided: ‘I’m 18, I’m a man, I’m going to grow a moustache’ – and it was pathetic for years – it was awful.
– Chris Hadfield
Spacewalking trumps everything. Viscerally, it is a phenomenal place to be; to be able to glance right and see the world, glance left and see the universe, and realise for a moment that you’re holding on to your known existence with one hand. That’s the thing.
– Chris Hadfield
There’s always constantly interesting things to do, and who knows, maybe I will be a good sculptor. I haven’t decided what I am going to do next, but I am not going to quit just because I did something interesting.
– Chris Hadfield
The Soyuz craft weighs tons, and you’re lying on the floor of it on your back. But the Russians do tell you, remember, before you land, stop talking so you don’t bite your tongue off.
– Chris Hadfield