Within Reason - #161 What’s the Point of Going Back to the Moon? Chris Hadfield -

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

Get Huel today with this exclusive offer for New Customers of 15% OFF with code alexoconnor at https://huel.com/alexoconnor (Minimum $50 purchase).For early, ad-free access to videos, and to support the channel, subscribe to my Substack: ⁠https://www.alexoconnor.com⁠.Chris Hadfield is a retired Royal Canadian Air Force colonel, test pilot, and CSA astronaut. As the first Canadian to perform extravehicular activity in outer space, he has flown two Space Shuttle missions and also served as commander of the International Space Station. Get Chris's book Final Orbit.TIMESTAMPS:(0:00) Have We Lost Interest in Space Travel? (3:56) What Is There To Learn In Space? (12:01) Is Space Exploration National Or Global? (18:00) Will Civilians Need Training To Go To Space? (22:35) The Psychological Challenges of Space Exploration (26:28) Are Astronauts Thrill Seekers? (34:33) Writing Fiction As An Astronaut (42:58) How Chris Became a Novelist (50:32) The Biggest Risk Chris Has Ever Taken (53:09) How Chris Tackles FearCONNECT:My Website YouTubeInstagramTikTok⁠TwitterFacebookCONTACT:Business email: [e-mail] enquiries: [e-mail]

Colonel Chris Hadfield, welcome to the show. It is my pleasure. Thank you for the invitation. Your story, insofar as it regards space travel, really begins, I think, in 1969 with the first moon landing. I think you were probably, what, like eight years old or something like that at the time. And you've often cited this as a sort of pivotal moment in your decision to one day learn how to go to space yourself, something you've since done and done. quite publicly into quite a lot of acclaim. My question is that just recently we saw Artemis II, which was a similar mission in that it went to the moon. It sort of flung around the moon and captured a lot of the world's attention. Like a lot of people were watching, lots of people

interested in the imagery that was coming out and interested in the people who were sent up there. But at the same time, I wasn't alive for the moon landing. And while it was a big moment, It felt like the kind of thing which I saw was happening on Twitter, you know, and I think that's really cool. And then I got on with my life, whereas when I look historically at the moon landing, it kind of seems like it was this moment where the whole Earth stood still and looked upwards. Do you think that people are still as excited now about space travel as they were back then? Yeah, I think you have a misimpression. the Apollo program ran for about four or five years and there were multiple flights

and most of them were completely ignored by the public, just like most face flights. There's a lot of stuff going on. Why would everybody be interested just because we launch a rocket with people on it? Apollo 8, which most resembles this recent Artemis mission when around the moon came back, it didn't capture very much attention real-time.

at all. But it was the first time people had taken a photograph of the entire Earth. And so when they got back and it was film cameras and their picture got processed and people suddenly saw the world as one beautiful little jewel hanging in an eternal blackness of the universe, that caught a lot of people's attention. And then Apollo 11 itself, yeah, it was remarkable and unprecedented in its day. I've heard various figures, like one third of everybody on Earth was following along. But by Apollo 12, everyone had lost interest again. And by Apollo 13, they're like, why are we still launching to the moon? We already did it once, as if, you know, it was just supposed to be a PR stunt or something and not exploring the universe. So that's completely normal. I think a lot of folks

confuse space exploration with space entertainment. They're not the same thing. Sometimes exploring the universe is entertaining, but most of the time, it's just like any other exploration or another scientific endeavor. Artemis, too, has had a resounding impact. I run into it constantly everywhere of people that had forgotten how to be inspired, or people who had suddenly noticed the amazing stuff that's going on. and I think it recalibrated and refocused people well. And the Artemis crew is currently on a like a world tour. And the reaction they're getting is spectacular.

I was just reading before you and I talked of the people they were speaking to in Ottawa and they're being in Europe soon. And I think that's a very good barometer of public interest. So, no, I think it's very similar and I think it's magnificent and I think it's one of the most inspiring things that human beings are up to anywhere on the world today. I think, as you said, it's not just about space entertainment. And you say, you know, people act as if this was some kind of PR stunt. Many people see the original moon landing as at least partly that in that it was this effort to sort of demonstrate a national supremacy and a business. space race, that sometimes people forget that there are kind of other reasons for going to space. So what, apart from just being like, this is really cool and we get to take pictures of the far side

of the moon on our iPhone, what's the point in a mission like this? Why bother going up there at all? Why bother doing anything at all, Alex? That's my kind of question. Well, but it's a realistic question. It's like, why would we go back to the moon. Well, why do you go back to your living room every day? Why? You know, it's a, it's a specious question. Almost everything that exists lies beyond the earth. You know, we are incredibly small in an infinite expanse of other things and other places and knowledge that we don't have yet. And the high ground has always been important. That's why Castle are on hilltops and antennas are on hilltops.

That was the limit of our technology for tens of thousands of years, but now we can put those antennas in orbit around the world or further. So for communications, for understanding the world, for internet, being able to get internet directly linked through space for GPS navigation, which you and I are using right now, even though we don't realize it. And if you're going to go as far as the moon, it's just an extrapolation of all those things, but also trying to understand the history of the earth itself. Where did the moon come from? What was the cataclysmic event that created the moon and the earth?

How did this all happen? Is it going to happen again? What are the fundamental natures of planetary physics? How does this all even work? And that's the type of question that we, why are there tides? is that we learned that the moon is getting further away, about the same rate that your fingernails grow. The only way we could ever measure that was by putting laser reflectors

or little tiny mirrors on the moon. It is the, also, it is a manifestation of the great arc of human struggle. It is giving ourselves an impossible task. because it is pushing the edge of human imagination. And then a subset of us rising and changing who we are so that we now have a new set of unprecedented human capabilities and then tackling this dangerous task, taking an enormous risk,

and then failing, but also occasionally succeeding. And succeeding and returning home triumphant, that's what every great novel in history has ever been written about. And it's the fundamental nature of life itself. And that's also what it is. So to look at it through the little shallow myopic lens of, well, I already see you do that once. There's no point you're ever doing that again.

Why would you ever go to another football match if you'd already been to one? Why would you ever read another book if you've already read one? Why would you ever take another breath if you've already taken one? To me, it's just a silly question. see I understand that because I mean I agree I think it's worth doing for its own sake but there must be more than just that to sort of on like a scientific level like it must also be like it's just a moment ago you said you know why would we people were saying so why would we go back to the moon if we've already done it as if there was sort of no science to be done

as if it were just for the sake of exploration which is which is worthwhile for sure but I think people maybe underestimate the amount of important scientific discovery that is made in space. I mean, when you became the commander of the ISS, if I'm not mistaken, you were engaged in some projects which were specifically sort of experimenting on the effects of zero gravity on like biological systems, right, unlike human biology or something to that effect, right? It's like stuff that you wouldn't immediately think is of prime importance when you're up there in space, but I'm sure there was actually quite a lot to learn. Well, yeah, the International Space Station is a laboratory, and it is an absolutely unique laboratory in all of humanity, because it's a laboratory essentially without gravity.

And what do you do if you take away like gravity? Suddenly, you can study like this. I have a cup of tea here, and gravity is so influential on the fluid dynamics, how the tea is behaving. in the cup. When we remove gravity, suddenly we can learn about fluid physics. Think how a fire behaves when you have convection, when heat rises, and then have a fire without gravity, and you can suddenly learn a tremendous amount about the process of combustion. Think about how your body functions. It is very much driven by gravity, your balance system, your blood pressure regulation system, how the body maintains bone density and muscle mass and all of those things,

how your eyes interact with your perception of the universe. As soon as you take away gravity, all of those things change. So it gives us an absolutely unique laboratory to study some fundamental scientific processes and properties. Also, of course, once you're above the air, you get a far clearer view of the universe with out all the air molecules in the way. Stars don't twinkle on board a spaceship. So you get a better platform for studying the universe.

And of course, it is the best platform we've ever built for studying the Earth, going around the world 16 times a day for decades, to try and understand the short and long-term changes of our planet itself and the atmosphere and the oceans. And so all of that is intensely scientific. But at the same time, it's also human. and psychological. And what we're doing on the space station and now on the moon is deciding how it is

that we will settle other planets. We have already sort of gone through various patterns of settling other continents on Earth. You know, everybody lived in Africa 80,000 years ago. And then our technology got good enough that we could start to leave. And we slowly spread over the whole planet and got to the Americas about when the Ice Age retreated about whatever, 18,000 years ago maybe. And as we have expanded as a species, as our technology has allowed us to live places, now even Antarctica, where people, even at the South Pole where 100 people live, we have had different ways of moving into a new continent or a number. new human opportunity. And culturally, we've done it very badly in some places and pretty well in others.

So the space station is a great experiment in that. And how we settle the moon is the next step in that leading towards how, as our technology continues to improve, will eventually settle Mars. So there's that great scientific component. There's the human psychological component, but there's also a big sociological component to what's going on. All of that's happening right now, at this moment in history. And I count myself very lucky to be alive and part of it right now. Oh, yeah. One of the other most experimental features, I suppose, of the ISS is the I part, is the international element. Your most recent novel,

which is sat behind you, Final Orbit, is interesting. it's set in the 70s, around the time of the Apollo Soyuz mission, which is a collaborative effort between the Americans and the Soviets, which is quite a significant sort of political event. And I think that it sort of signals this idea that people have that space exploration is not a national project or a national endeavor, but a global endeavor. And it seems like some progress has been made there in that we have an international space station, in that Artemis II is a collaboration between two space agencies.

But, you know, it's Canada and it's America who have historically been like pretty good friends. To what extent do you think? And I don't mean in the sense that it maybe should be, but literally, practically speaking, to what extent do you think that space exploration and travel is still very much a national project rather than a global one? I think space exploration is intensely global. When I was born, no one had flown in space. All of human space travel is younger than I am. And in fact, the very first thing to get into orbit was as recently as 1957,

so less than a human lifetime ago. So for whatever, 300,000 years, we were incapable of doing it. but our technology suddenly got good enough that in the last lifetime, we were able to access space. But only a couple nations in the world had the combination of technology and purpose and funding that they could manage it. And so if almost nobody can do it, then it lives by a different set of rules. If every single person on Earth could go to space in the next 10 minutes, it would be entirely different than if only two nations on Earth. could do it and they could only do it rarely. And we're somewhere in that transition right now.

Many decades ago, our technology got good enough and safe enough and therefore cheap enough that a private citizen could pay a private company to put something into orbit around the world to become much more global and sort of common. And our technology is getting good enough now that we actually can pay. pay to fly in space. It's no longer only the purview of trillionaires like the Soviet Union and the United States. But now a successful individual can buy a ticket and fly in space. Suborbidally, just go up and fall down again, or even a few have paid to orbit the world. And the cost is continuing to drop. And so that's about as international as it gets. It's becoming essentially like international air travel. No, no, where you're from, you can buy a ticket and get on an airplane that somebody has organized commercially and travel to anywhere in the world. And we're in that transitional phase with spaceflight right now. We're by no means there yet, but that's what's happening.

And obviously, we need now to backfill the regulatory environment, just as we did with air travel a century ago or car travel a century ago. you've got to build all the rules and stop signs and stoplights and driver's licenses and all the rest of it. But that's what's happening right now. It is going from impossible to barely possible to now commercial, to now becoming much more global and universal. And we're a long ways down that path. We'll get back to the show in just a moment. But first, a quick question for you. When was the last time you paid attention to how much fiber you're eating? not protein, not calories, fibre. The data on this is surprising. In the US, fewer than one in ten adults hit their recommended daily intake.

And fiber isn't just like some bonus nutrient. It's foundational to your fullness, your gut health, your energy levels, your blood sugar. And so today, I want to share with you what I've found to be the simplest fix. It's today's sponsor, my friends, at Huell. That's H-U-E-L. Recently, I've been doing a lot of preparation for debates and events, And when I'm like in the zone and feel like I'm really getting some serious work done, I don't want to be thinking about what food I'm going to eat or trying to find things to cook with

or making sure that I'm staying on top of my nutrient intake and stuff like that. And so I've just been reaching for these, especially if I'm in a rush, the ready to drink edition is a lifesaver. This black edition is 35 grams of vegan protein, 7 grams of fiber, it's got 27 essential vitamins and minerals, it's gluten-free, it's got no artificial sweeteners. and it's low cost coming in at under $5. It costs less than a latte, and it keeps me full for hours. And if I want the caffeine from a latte,

it even comes in an iced latte flavor, which is caffeinated. But then maybe you're into customizability, or maybe you're doing the whole smoothie thing. If that's the case, hule also comes in powdered form. You get a bit more protein that way, and it also allows you to choose how thick or thin you want your hule to be. This has got 40 grams of protein,

and the same complete nutrition. It's like an insurance policy, protecting my nutrition when I don't have the time or energy to cook. And that's why I have one of these almost every single day. And for new customers, there's an offer on for you. You'll get 15% off if you use the code Alex O'Connor at hul.com forward slash Alex O'Connor. So thanks to Huell for supporting the show. And with that said, let's get back to it. Well, how casual can spaceflight be in that, like, at least currently, I know it's a little bit different because people are going up to

for different reasons, but I think to myself, if I wanted to become an astronaut, I'm sort of presuming it would take an exceptionally long amount of time. Lots of training. I'd need to have psychological assessments. I'd need to be physically fit. I would need to, like all sorts of checks. You sort of imagine it's this sort of grueling process, like becoming a Navy seal or something. And finally, you're able to go up into space. And when you do, you're so preoccupied with, like, making sure that everything is safe and running correctly that, you know, one wonders if you even have time to sort of enjoy the moment. Would it be as simpler sort of that all going on,

but being able to take your sort of average show off the street and just saying strap in, we'll take you up there and cover that? Or do you think it's going to require a similar kind of lengthy training and preparation to take anyone into space? You're confusing that, primarily you're confusing the term astronaut, I think. How hard is it for you to become an aviator?

well, you pay, I don't know, $100 bucks and fly on Ryanair. And you're an aviator. You have zero qualifications. Your entire training program is when you sit in your seat and they spend the 45 seconds showing you where the exits are. That's your entire training program. And you are now an aviator,

but no one is confusing you with being a pilot or a professional commercial pilot who can handle that airplane so that when you're climbing out of airport in New York and Canada geese go down both intakes and you have to, through incredible skill, land that airplane in the Hudson River and save every single life on board. Yeah, that's an aviator who did that, but a hugely different skill set that is needed within society. Astronaut's exactly the same. You can buy a ticket and with not much more training than you do to

fly on Ryanair, you can go for a suborbital flight right now. You just go up, experience weightlessness for a few minutes, see the curvature of the earth, get into the blackness of space, like William Shatner from Star Trek did. And the cost of it is about the cost of a luxury car. And that's a lot of money for a short experience. But at the same time, who needs a luxury car? You know, people, it's why it's called a luxury car because it's a luxury and lots of people every year buy luxury cars. You know, if you've made the money, that's your choice.

So I think that will continue to be exactly like that. As the technology gets better so that we can trust it more, the cost will continue to come down so that more and more people will be space travelers just as you can be in. air traveler, but that doesn't make you a professional pilot or a professional astronaut. And if you're going to do more than just a very simple flight, if you're going to travel the long distance from here to the moon or to live and operate a space station on board, then you need extensive training. And you're going to be away from any sort of medical care for months and months. And so you need a very detailed physical. And you need to be the right psychology because it's a really unusual demanding life of service.

And any single thing that can go wrong on board a space station or a vehicle going further away, often one of the very first things you lose is communications with Earth because everything's interconnected. And so no matter what fails on board, navigation, main computer system, pressurization system, getting hit by a meteorite, someone getting appendicitis, whatever. you have to have the skill set on board to be able to deal with it or people will die. And so therefore, yeah, the role of professional astronaut will continue just as the role of professional car driver or professional airplane pilot exists. But we're just in a transition phase. And astronaut used to be almost a sacrosanct term. But, you know, it's sort of in my mind astronaut amniator.

I think if you use the term space travel or air traveler, it's probably a little clearer what that means in people's minds. But, you know, they're just words. Yeah. Tell me about the psychology of not so much being in space, but being so detached from planet Earth. I mean, I've heard you say before that one of the biggest sort of misconceptions about being in space is the idea of loneliness. It's this sort of, you know, like archetypal. image of the lonely traveler completely detached, unable to reach anybody else in the world. And you've said before that that's not quite accurate, but also I'm just interested in what are the kind of psychological challenges that people would face going to the ISS. Yeah, I want to dispel that myth right now. Spaceflight is joyful, spectacular, amazing, like a gift that continues to unwrap itself for the entire time that you are in space.

I think the Artemis II crew did a wonderful job of helping people see that. Our technology is good enough now that we had really clear visuals and extended communication with that crew on their way to the moon, around the moon, and on the way back. And people got to see just how great this is. These are superb human beings, extremely smart and competent, deeply trained after a lifetimes of service, and yet reveling and celebrating together and all the highs and lows of human emotion right there for everyone else to share in. That's what spaceflight is like. But then if you watch Ad Astra or First Man or something, everything's just so grim and everybody's so

grumpy and sad and everything's horrible. And Sean Penn's TV series, I didn't make it, what was it call, I don't know, the first, I think the first crew going to Mars. It's because they got it completely wrong. They just sort of made a preconception of how they pictured it and then built an entire false narrative around that. It is one of the greatest of human experiences to be able to see our world and to leave it and come back and learn new things on behalf of everyone else and be working with a group of amazing people doing new and complex and dangerous things successfully together.

So it's a great triumphal arc of a life. But you have to choose the right people. You don't want to be claustrophobic. You know, it's a tiny little place. You need to be competent, so you're not always just afraid because you don't know what you're doing. You have to be willing to live a life of service. It's become common in the last little while.

if you meet someone who serves in the military or the police forces or maybe a firefighter, to thank them for their service, which I think is a lovely sentiment. But I'm not sure that most people, as the words come out of their mouth, fully appreciate what they're saying when they say, thank you for your service. What they're actually saying is, thank you for being willing to die on my behalf, even though we've never met. That's what a life of service is. As I was a military fighter pilot in combat, I was a test pilot making sure that new airplanes work properly, and then I was an explorer as an astronaut for 21 years.

And all of those things were intensely dangerous, but they're part of our society. And some people sign up to do them. And I think it's important to recognize that we need people who devote the majority of their lives to service in order for our society to function. and so I think very carefully when I thank someone for their service. This idea of choosing the right people, I also heard you say when talking about misconceptions about spaceflight, the people kind of assume that astronauts are like thrill seekers who kind of want this surge of adrenaline, who want to sort of get like really pumped up on going out into space, when realistically, it's probably not quite quite.

what you want in like an astronaut or a space traveler, right? Here's a question for you. If you were going in for open heart surgery, would you want your surgeon to be doing it for the adrenaline rush? Would you want your surgeon the whole time she was operating inside your chest cavity to be just like thrilled and at the edge of her excitement level? Absolutely not. You want someone who knows everything there is to know about that particular.

topic, who is ready for everything that can go wrong to react the right way, and who conducts themselves professionally and supremely competently. And pridefully, I mean, a thoracic surgeon is rightfully prideful in what they can do. It's a really complex skill. And it's the same for astronauts. We're not there like we're bungee jumping or something. You know, that's silly. In fact, the last thing you want to have happened is to have adrenaline in your veins.

Adrenaline is an ancient evolutionary trait that allows you to run faster than the wild animal that's trying to eat you. That's why you have adrenaline. So that you have a sudden, at great physical harm, you get a sudden burst of extra capability. that's not how you operate spaceships. They aren't wild animals you're running away from. It's a cerebral job. And it takes incredible depths of preparation. Very few of which are physical.

Most of it's mental. And so, yeah, I think it's fun in the movies to have everybody yelling, Yeha, and getting up and applauding and beating their chest regularly. But, you know, that's movies. That's that's, you know, X-Men and Marvel and stuff, which is fun. I like it. It's fun to watch, but it sure isn't real life. It kind of makes me think that the best kind of astronaut might be like a little bit

emotionless in that regard then, because emotions can get in the way and can make it sort of difficult or can be distracting. And at the same time, I wonder if even if that is just a result of sort of training, I'm trying to put yourself in a situation where you stay completely in the zone and don't get distracted, whether that kind of dampens the ability to enjoy your time up there, to experience the awe, to sort of recognize what's going on. I don't know if you've ever seen the television series, The Crown, about the British monarchy, but there's an episode where it must be Prince Philip meets the Apollo crew who landed on the moon. And he's, you know, the prince is like

obsessed with learning how to fly and he wants to experience the freedom and he's just, I think he's going through like a midlife crisis or something and he just really wants to sort of explore and he loves all that kind of stuff and he meets these three guys and he's totally thrilled to meet them. He's got all these questions. He's like, tell me, what, what was it like when you looked out and saw the earth and they're just there like, well, you know, there wasn't really that much time to look. We were kind of, kind of busy. And it's like supremely disappointing because it turns out that the whole time they were up there, like these characters, I don't think this is historical exactly, but for the narrative of this story, they're portrayed

as these like emotionless soldiers. Do you think there's like any truth in that? Like, are astronauts because of this sort of unable to to enjoy it in the way that like if I was strapped in and taken up, I'd spend my whole time just staring out the window, you know? So I would like to point out that the crown is fictional. It's a television show. And so therefore, it's in a perfect position to perpetuate stereotypes inaccurately. Because that's what people want to hear. People want to have their expectations fulfilled. They don't want to find out that, in fact, things are different than the way that they picture the world.

And in contact, I think, with what's her name, Jody Foster, is that her name, the actress? She says something like, we should have sent a poet, which is the same sort of thought. So I'm a musician, and I've been a performing musician my entire life. I'm an author. I've written six best-selling books, fiction and non-fiction. I speak publicly. I spoke yesterday, and many people are crying in the audience because of the way that I'm sharing ideas. And I perform with symphonies, and I write music.

And yet, when I'm operating a spaceship, or commanding a space station or flying an F-18, that's not a time for histrionics. It's not a time for emotional outbursts. And I think there's this weird misperception that if you have self-control, you're unemotional. Yeah. That's wrong.

It means you have self-control. It doesn't mean you don't have emotions. And I think anybody who thinks the Apollo 11 crew is unemotional should read a Mike Collins book carrying the fire. It's fascinating and philosophically revealing and insightful and funny and witty. And it's a really good book. And it's a little bit of insight into Mike Collins, one of the three people that went to the moon on Apollo 11. And I've worked with all the astronauts in the world. I was president of the Association of Space Explorers,

which is our sort of our professional society. And we're just a bunch of people of all different types, just like anywhere. And I could easily say that how come podcasts hosts are just so boring and two-dimensional? And why are they not more excitable and more interesting? And, you know, I'm now inaccurately generalizing. And so I just I find it kind of I don't know, understandable I guess

But there is a really complex set of skills that will allow you to be trusted to command a spaceship And one of them, real strong ones, is self-control But at the same time, you'd be a very incomplete astronaut if you weren't deep in heart and deep in soul at the same time, because then you would miss the magnificence of the human experience that's going on around you.

Well, I'm glad that we can dispel at least one of the stereotypes that you've just listed today. The other one remains to be seen. But I know what you mean. It must be incredibly frustrating to hear that, because what you're experiencing is one of the most profound things. I was going to say one of the most profound moments. It's like one of the most profound moments of humankind. the human story. And you even, you've got a guitar. I mean, like most people will know that you went

super viral for literally recording a music video in space. I saw one of the comments saying that technically speaking, that must be the most expensive music video ever produced. No, the cheapest. There was no money spent on it. None. Actually, I think we had to pay a licensing fee. So it was somewhere in the order of 50 pounds, I think. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, that idea should be put to bed immediately. But also, like, Having said that, I mean, as you say, like fiction can be really annoying when it comes to space travel, not just for like the sort of the nerds like me who sit there and think, well, why is there noise when it's in space and stuff like that? But also just because of the sort of ideas around what space travellers like.

But you took what some people, not knowing your history as somebody who was always interested in literature, might have seen as quite surprising, astronaut turned novelist. You sort of got this opportunity to rectify some of this by writing fiction from the perspective of someone who's really been there and done that. What is it that fiction allows you to do when telling the story of spacecraft and spaceflight that nonfiction doesn't? Or is it just a desire to communicate a cool story that motivated you to turn to fiction? Fiction gives you so much more freedom as an author. I've written six books. I'm writing my seventh now. Three of them nonfiction. three of them fiction. If you want to really allow people to get the experience of what's happening, there's various ways to try and share it. Like I could describe where I'm sitting right now and I could say the temperature is 23 degrees.

Or I could say it was just cold enough that because he'd forgotten to put shoes on before the interview, the hair was prickling on his arms, did an attempt to keep him warm because it was a little colder than he wanted it to be. Both of them are true, but one of them is more told as a story, so it becomes inherently more interesting. Or if I said,

if I made up a couple things that happened, the people that came into the room and experienced the same thing differently, then it would give me another whole layer in order to describe and share the reality of, of what's happening. And so by writing alternative history fiction, thriller fiction, as I do, it allows me to tell

the fundamental story of what happened, but then weave in other characters. So you get other perspectives. You get all the different emotional range, not just the actual reality of whoever happened to be present at the time. And so, I don't know, it's maybe the difference between. just one, picking out the melody on a piano and having the full orchestration behind you so that you can get so much more out of the same melody. And so I love the freedom and the depth that you can get with fiction.

And also, it's just so much fun to write because I learn so much and it challenges me. and it's it's almost as if I'm constantly watching a really interesting program in the back of my head because I'm creating the program as I go I'm writing this book and something you might say or something that I see or a thought that flashes through my head I go ah that that will be interesting I can include that that's a character quirk or that's a plot idea or whatever so so yeah it's it both challenges me. It gives me a great opportunity to learn and express myself. But I think also it allows me to share the reality of the spaceflight experience in a way that just mere nonfiction keeps me from doing fully.

Yeah. You're able to sort of almost abstract experiences and ideas that you can, sort of merge things together. You can take the sort of long complicated history of different experiences and put them into one character to sort of give it to everyone all at once. Like, I mean, your character, Kaz, in the latest novel, is missing an eye. And as far as I'm aware, that is, like, inspired by and based on something that happened to you, something that also happened to a friend, you sort of were able to take those two experiences, merge them together, and end up with this sort of representative character, right?

If you want to write a novel, especially if it's a recurring theme, like several novels in the same series, with the same main characters, your characters have to be interesting. They can't just be successful accountants. You know, like, okay, he's a successful accountant, but he's a successful accountant who,

and then you add some sort of weird character trait that makes them interesting. Or that when he goes, goes home at night, he's dealing with whatever, something that gives you depth and interesting, interest. And so you need

quirky and flawed characters, just like real people are, in order to have the depth of plot room in order to be able to write a successful series. And the ultimate closed room mystery is a spaceship. You're like, there's three people.

How many things can happen? So, trying to build plot lines that allow for variety in a very constrained set of circumstances is a lot of fun to write. And so to have a main protagonist who has all of the skills so that I can insert him in multiple different situations, but for whatever, due to some sort of flaw, he can't actually be the main character. That gave me great room. I was delighted when I hit upon the idea of how to build a recurring protagonist so that I could then have multiple plots for he still ends up being a pivotal figure. So that's also the beauty of fiction.

But he's based on fact, as you say. I almost had a horrific accident with an F-18. And a friend of mine had a horrific accident with a fighter airplane that took out his eye. And then there have been professional pilots with one eye in the military and civilian pilots through history. So none of it's non-credible. But at the same time, it makes him, in amongst his other quirks, a more interesting character to write and hopefully a more interesting character to read. Yeah, people might wonder, like, if you lose an eye, isn't that the kind of thing you were just talking earlier about the sort of strenuous sort of medical examinations, making sure everything is tip top? Isn't missing an eye quite a significant hindrance there?

Well, everybody's missing something. And the real question is, do you have depth perception? I mean, like, everybody sees differently. Is your color vision good enough so that on a screen where certain lights mean certain things, can you discern the difference? Is your hearing good enough? Are you tall enough? Are your arms long enough or short enough? Are you, you know, there's all kinds of things so that you could fit into a spacesuit or,

operate certain types of machinery. And there are commercial pilots with one eye in a job that requires a lot of depth perception. But if you've somehow compensated for it so that you can function, then rules change over time. It used to be you had to head perfect vision to be an Air Force pilot. Perfect, 2020 or better. But after a while, we realized, why are we doing that? Is 2030 good enough? And what if you get hired at 2020, but then your vision degrades? No astronaut has ever launched into space with everything perfect about them physically. Every astronaut's got some sort of physical quirk. We're just human beings, you know.

And so, so yeah, it's, it's an interesting thought. And as time progresses, we realize more and more what's actually important. What skills do they definitely need? what can we maybe relax the rules a little bit on? And so that's what I'm experimenting with, with Kazamekis in my Apollo Murder series. I'm so interested about like the moment of which you began to realize that writing a novel of this kind, a novel, a novel was like a realistic prospect. It must have been quite a shift. I guess writing a book is a pretty natural thing to do when it comes to nonfiction, but I have a feeling it's a story involving Ray Bradbury that got you originally into writing your first novel, right?

Yeah, so writing this book, Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, it's kind of the summation of all of my thinking that allowed me to conduct the life that I've lived. And this book is in 35 languages, I think, and it's used by universities and all. So it is accomplished its objective, but it's non-eastern. fiction. But the Bradbury family, Ray Bradbury, of course, a terrific science fiction author. But if you haven't read Bradbury recently, he wrote in the genre of science fiction, but he was just such a beautiful, thoughtful writer, his word choices, his imagery that he could generate by the way he used the language.

And also his philosophy of life and how he brought that into. his books and the time that he wrote just after the Second World War, after the atomic bombs had been released in Japan, killing so many people, it had a big impact on him. So he wrote some really interesting books. And they were re-releasing one of his books, The Martian Chronicles. And they're sort of a special edition, you know, folio society edition, which is great. And the family asked, the timing was such that they'd heard of me and they and they knew that I had written some nonfiction books and the family asked if there was any way that I would write a new forward or introduction to the Martian Chronicles and when the request came through I thought well gosh I don't know

how to write that but that sounds sort of interesting and sounds like a good challenge and besides I'd like to reread the Martian Chronicles anyway and sure what an honor and it'll be fun and I have great respect for Ray Bradbury. So I took it upon myself as a task, re-read the book, really thought about it, tried to picture him as a man, did my best job writing a fairly like, I don't know, 3,000 words or something, not just a little throwaway thing. And I was happy with it. Well, they loved it. Everybody was happy, sold books, and that's great. But someone else read that introduction that I had written and it was my British publisher,

a guy named John Butler actually and he came to me initiative and said, did you write that all by yourself? I said, yeah, of course, I wrote it all by myself. What are you insinuating? And he said,

because I think, based on that, you could write fiction. And I was like, John, I can't write fiction. I don't know how to write fiction. It's a whole new skill set. He said, yeah,

but you've learned other things before. And you have demonstrated by writing that intro that, the type of visualization and word choices and ability to express yourself and everything, that shows that you probably have the chops to write fiction. I'm like, oh, but much to John's credit, he also said, so here's, I've got an idea for a fiction book that I've been kicking around, and I've got a title for it, and sort of no real idea but a title. And I'm not in a hurry.

You can take as long as you like. And I'm willing to give you an advance, which is sort of like the publisher giving you a loan, so you can pay for your own life while you're writing a book. So will you do it? So that's every writer's dream. You've already got the title of the book. You've got no deadline. And someone's giving you money. It's like, oh, sure.

Okay. Sure. I'll do that. But after about a year, everybody noticed that I hadn't done anything yet. So then I got a deadline. And then I really started writing in earnest. And I learned a tremendous amount writing that first fiction book. My first draft was way too long.

And I really needed the help of an editor to come in and remove whole sections of the book. But I'm very proud of the book that came out of it, The Apollo Murders. And it was a number one bestseller. And it's in 15 languages. So it did great. And then that kicked off the series that then became the defector. And then this one, Final Orbit. And now the fourth book in the series that I'm writing right now.

Yeah. Were you surprised at just how well it all went? I mean, I know you always knew that you'd be good at something like that. But you kind of also at the same time, you've been used to having books doing really well, but turning to fiction, did it feel like risky? Was it like, you know, like, what was it like when you suddenly realized, I'm a novelist? It's it's working. People are liking it. It's awesome. Everything worth doing in life is risky. Everything worth doing in life has risk. Everything. You just don't think about it. But anytime you want to do something new, you're taking some sort of risk. It might just be reputational or it might actually be physical. But to write a novel, then that's a huge amount of work. You know, it's at least a full year of work. And so to put a full year into something that might be a complete bust, you know, you only get so many years in your life. And so you've got to decide, is this a risk worth taking? I think the really nervous people were my publishers because there I was hopefully in some room toiling away.

And I'd only given them little snippets of it. And finally, on the 20, whatever, the 31st of December, I turned in the manuscript digitally. And they hurriedly scan read the whole thing. And I can almost hear the palpable size of relief from then. Okay, he can write a novel. Great. All right. good. It's going to take a bunch of editing to get rid of the unnecessary plot lines, but

I think it was a big relief for them. And then for me, my threshold was publication day when other people really started reading it, and not just my trusted friends and, you know, family, but where it got released, like turning your baby loose in the world. Yeah, I was trepidacious about it. I was really hoping people would like it. I thought it was a good book. I did lots of reassurances. But just like anyone, I, I'm reading all of the reviews, and whenever anybody says anything untoward and one of the reviews, I take it personally and all the rest of it. But all you can ever do is give yourself edgy, crazy dreams of what might happen and then work to change who you are to try and make those dreams come true to the best of your ability. and then just see how that runs in the world.

What else is life but those things? And I've just been extremely lucky to have had multiple different areas of things that were important to me that other people have found worthwhile and interesting as well. And so I'm constantly looking for new risks and new challenges and then trying to do my absolute best to execute them properly. And to me, that is the very essence of a life well lived. I've got two questions then. What do you think is the biggest risk you've ever taken? And what do you think is the most danger you've found yourself in? And do you think that those two are the same thing?

The biggest risk I've ever taken, I'm not sure how to quantify it. If you quantify it simply, like risk to my own life, then the two are the same thing. thing. And that would be flying space shuttle Atlantis for the first time. The odds of dying that day were 1 in 38. And not just for a second, but for almost nine minutes. And 1 in 38, you know, those are bad odds. That means if you do it 38 times, it's going to happen, you know, I think.

And so that was measurably one of the most. dangerous things I've done in my life. Spacewalking is dangerous. Being a combat fighter pilot, you know, with a fully armed F-18, going face on with someone who's got a suitably armed airplane and you're not communicating with each other. Those are dangerous things. But what's the riskiest thing I've done in my life? I would say being a parent, because you are taking responsibility for creating other lives and turning them loose in the world where as soon as they get to about the age of 17,

you no longer have any real control over what they're doing. And so you are directly, unmistakably responsible for having done something, thing that can have significant impact on the world that fairly shortly after you've created it, you no longer have control over it. And that's a risky thing to do. And one individual can have significant consequence in the world. And if it's something, you know, another way to measure risk is what do I worry most about?

Probably as a parent, I worry more than I have about anything else, just because they're my children and I want them to be happy and successful. And it goes, you never stop being a father, you know, once you've had a child. And so, so that's probably the riskiest thing I've ever done. One of the things that will come to mind for people hearing about danger and risk is a feeling of fear that seems to coincide with these two things. And bravery is sometimes characterized as sort of not feeling fear. But other people characterize it. it perhaps more accurately as feeling the fear and doing it anyway? Which of those do you relate to you more with your training and your experiences? Do you feel the fear and do it anyway? Or do you think you've

gotten to a point where you're just ready and you don't really feel that anxiety? A lot of people treat fear and danger as a synonym as the same word. Like that, like we say, oh, well, that's a scary thing. Things aren't scary. Things are just things. And whether you are a of them or not is up to you. And something that you used to be afraid of because you knew nothing about it or you didn't know how to do it. Now, even though it's just as dangerous as it was when you were seven, you have learned how to master it so that now the danger is exactly the same, but your fear has gone to zero.

And is that where you were at? You think your fear was... The greatest antidote for fear is competence. If you're afraid of something, it's probably because you don't understand it or you don't know how to do it, like riding a bike or driving a car or whatever. And so, whenever, and fear is a very necessary emotion because it hints to you that you're not ready. And if you are completely ready, then you're probably not afraid. And I would much rather go through life ready than afraid. I don't need ulcers.

I don't need all of the symptoms of stress in my life. And so I work hard to get ready for the extremes of my own life, the things that might happen, to get ready for them, especially if they're high probability. Because then I have a lot more going for me than fear. I know what I'm going to do if the fire alarm goes off in this building or if I choke or if someone starts having a heart attack or whatever, choose your scenario. Even when outside of your control, the odds are 1 in 38, even with all the training, is that a situation where the fear is still not even though? It's not binary. It's not like you're helpless. You have a million things you can do.

Like driving your car down the road, in one second you can kill yourself. But you have a whole bunch of choices to make and control to make sure that you arrive safely at your destination. And you know that there's drunk drivers and random and inattentive and texting and whatever driver is out there. But if you recognize that they're out there and you are attentive and competent as a driver and you pay attention, then you can greatly increase your odds even against things over which you have no apparent control. You can't control everything. You need to recognize that there's very little that you actually do control.

But if something is important to you, if a risk is worth taking, then your job completely changes. And it's not to cross your fingers, but to actually get good at this thing so that you can be part of controlling your own destiny and success. And therefore, the things that you really want to accomplish. And taking control of your own decision making in order to improve your chances of leading the life that you want to. to live, to me that is the most important lesson that I have ever learned. Thank you, Sophia, at bay. Well, Chris Hatfield, thank you so much for your time. It's been fascinating.

Lovely to speak with you as well. Thanks for inviting me in, and I really enjoyed the conversation.