TED2014
Chris Hadfield: What I learned from going blind in space
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There's an astronaut saying: In space, “there is no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse.” So how do you deal with the complexity, the sheer pressure, of dealing with dangerous and scary situations? Retired colonel Chris Hadfield paints a vivid portrait of how to be prepared for the worst in space (and life) -- and it starts with walking into a spider’s web. Watch for a special space-y performance.
Chris Hadfield - Astronaut
Tweeting (and covering Bowie) from the International Space Station last year, Colonel Chris Hadfield reminded the world how much we love space. Full bio
Tweeting (and covering Bowie) from the International Space Station last year, Colonel Chris Hadfield reminded the world how much we love space. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:12
What's the scariest thing you've ever done?
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Or another way to say it is,
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what's the most dangerous
thing that you've ever done?
thing that you've ever done?
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And why did you do it?
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I know what the most dangerous thing is
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that I've ever done
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because NASA does the math.
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You look back to the first five shuttle launches,
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the odds of a catastrophic event
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during the first five shuttle launches
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was one in nine.
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And even when I first flew in the shuttle
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back in 1995, 74 shuttle flight,
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the odds were still now that we look back
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about one in 38 or so -- one in 35, one in 40.
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Not great odds, so it's a really interesting day
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when you wake up at the Kennedy Space Center
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and you're going to go to space that day
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because you realize by the end of the day
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you're either going to be floating
effortlessly, gloriously in space,
effortlessly, gloriously in space,
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or you'll be dead.
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You go into, at the Kennedy Space Center,
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the suit-up room,
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the same room that our childhood heroes
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got dressed in,
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that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got suited in
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to go ride the Apollo rocket to the moon.
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And I got my pressure suit built around me
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and rode down outside in the van
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heading out to the launchpad --
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in the Astro van -- heading out to the launchpad,
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and as you come around the corner
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at the Kennedy Space Center,
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it's normally predawn, and in the distance,
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lit up by the huge xenon lights,
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is your spaceship --
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the vehicle that is going to take you off the planet.
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The crew is sitting in the Astro van
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sort of hushed, almost holding hands,
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looking at that as it gets bigger and bigger.
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We ride the elevator up
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and we crawl in, on your hands and knees
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into the spaceship, one at a time,
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and you worm your way up
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into your chair and plunk yourself down
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on your back.
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And the hatch is closed,
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and suddenly,
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what has been a lifetime of both dreams and denial
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is becoming real,
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something that I dreamed about,
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in fact, that I chose to do when I was nine years old,
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is now suddenly within not too many minutes
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of actually happening.
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In the astronaut business --
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the shuttle is a very complicated vehicle;
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it's the most complicated flying machine ever built.
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And in the astronaut business,
we have a saying, which is,
we have a saying, which is,
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there is no problem so bad
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that you can't make it worse.
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(Laughter)
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And so you're very conscious in the cockpit;
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you're thinking about all of the things
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that you might have to do,
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all the switches and all the
wickets you have to go through.
wickets you have to go through.
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And as the time gets closer and closer,
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this excitement is building.
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And then about three and a
half minutes before launch,
half minutes before launch,
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the huge nozzles on the back,
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like the size of big church bells,
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swing back and forth
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and the mass of them is such
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that it sways the whole vehicle,
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like the vehicle is alive underneath you,
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like an elephant getting up
off its knees or something.
off its knees or something.
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And then about 30 seconds before launch,
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the vehicle is completely alive --
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it is ready to go --
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the APUs are running,
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the computers are all self-contained,
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it's ready to leave the planet.
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And 15 seconds before launch, this happens:
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(Video) Voice: 12, 11, 10,
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nine, eight, seven, six --
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(Space shuttle preparing for takeoff)
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-- start, two, one,
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booster ignition, and liftoff of
the space shuttle Discovery,
the space shuttle Discovery,
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returning to the space station, paving the way ...
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(Space shuttle taking off)
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Chris Hadfield: It is incredibly powerful
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to be on board one of these things.
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You are in the grip of something
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that is vastly more powerful than yourself.
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It's shaking you so hard you can't focus
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on the instruments in front of you.
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It's like you're in the jaws of some enormous dog
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and there's a foot in the small of your back
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pushing you into space,
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accelerating wildly straight up,
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shouldering your way through the air,
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and you're in a very complex place --
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paying attention, watching the vehicle
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go through each one of its wickets
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with a steadily increasing smile on your face.
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After two minutes, those solid rockets explode off
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and then you just have the liquid engines,
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the hydrogen and oxygen,
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and it's as if you're in a dragster
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with your foot to the floor
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and accelerating like you've never accelerated.
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You get lighter and lighter,
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the force gets on us heavier and heavier.
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It feels like
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someone's pouring cement on you or something.
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Until finally,
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after about eight minutes and 40 seconds or so,
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we are finally at exactly the right altitude,
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exactly the right speed,
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the right direction, the engine shut off,
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and we're weightless.
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And we're alive.
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It's an amazing experience.
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But why would we take that risk?
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Why would you do something that dangerous?
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In my case the answer is fairly straightforward.
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I was inspired as a youngster
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that this was what I wanted to do.
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I watched the first people walk on the moon
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and to me, it was just an obvious thing --
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I want to somehow turn myself into that.
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But the real question is,
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how do you deal with the danger of it
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and the fear that comes from it?
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How do you deal with fear versus danger?
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And having the goal in mind,
thinking about where it might lead,
thinking about where it might lead,
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directed me to a life of
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looking at all of the small details to allow
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this to become possible,
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to be able to launch and go
help build a space station
help build a space station
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where you are on board a million-pound creation
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that's going around the world at five miles a second,
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eight kilometers a second,
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around the world 16 times a day,
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with experiments on board that are teaching us
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what the substance of the universe is made of
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and running 200 experiments inside.
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But maybe even more importantly,
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allowing us to see the world in a way
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that is impossible through any other means,
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to be able to look down
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and have -- if your jaw could drop, it would --
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the jaw-dropping gorgeousness of the turning orb
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like a self-propelled art gallery of fantastic,
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constantly changing beauty that is the world itself.
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And you see, because of the speed,
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a sunrise or a sunset every 45 minutes
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for half a year.
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And the most magnificent part of all that
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is to go outside on a spacewalk.
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You are in a one-person spaceship
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that is your spacesuit,
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and you're going through space with the world.
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It's an entirely different perspective,
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you're not looking up at the universe,
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you and the Earth are going
through the universe together.
through the universe together.
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And you're holding on with one hand,
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looking at the world turn beside you.
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It's roaring silently
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with color and texture as it pours by
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mesmerizingly next to you.
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And if you can tear your eyes away from that
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and you look under your arm
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down at the rest of everything,
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it's unfathomable blackness,
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with a texture you feel like you
could stick your hand into.
could stick your hand into.
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and you are holding on with one hand,
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one link to the other seven billion people.
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And I was outside on my first spacewalk
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when my left eye went blind,
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and I didn't know why.
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Suddenly my left eye slammed shut
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in great pain
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and I couldn't figure out why my eye wasn't working.
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I was thinking, what do I do next?
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I thought, well maybe that's why we have two eyes,
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so I kept working.
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But unfortunately, without gravity,
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tears don't fall.
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So you just get a bigger and
bigger ball of whatever that is
bigger ball of whatever that is
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mixed with your tears on your eye
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until eventually, the ball becomes so big
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that the surface tension takes it
across the bridge of your nose
across the bridge of your nose
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like a tiny little waterfall
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and goes "goosh" into your other eye,
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and now I was completely blind
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outside the spaceship.
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So what's the scariest thing you've ever done?
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(Laughter)
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Maybe it's spiders.
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A lot of people are afraid of spiders.
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I think you should be afraid of spiders --
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spiders are creepy and they've got long, hairy legs,
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and spiders like this one, the brown recluse --
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it's horrible. If a brown recluse bites you,
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you end with one of these
horrible, big necrotic things
horrible, big necrotic things
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on your leg
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and there might be one right now
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sitting on the chair behind you, in fact.
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And how do you know?
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And so a spider lands on you,
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and you go through this great, spasmy attack
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because spiders are scary.
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But then you could say, well
is there a brown recluse
is there a brown recluse
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sitting on the chair beside me or not?
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I don't know. Are there brown recluses here?
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So if you actually do the research, you find out that
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in the world there are about
50,000 different types of spiders,
50,000 different types of spiders,
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and there are about two dozen that are venomous
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out of 50,000.
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And if you're in Canada, because of the cold winters
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here in B.C., there's about 720,
730 different types of spiders
730 different types of spiders
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and there's one -- one --
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that is venomous,
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and its venom isn't even fatal,
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it's just kind of like a nasty sting.
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And that spider -- not only that,
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but that spider has beautiful markings on it,
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it's like "I'm dangerous. I got a big radiation
symbol on my back, it's the black widow."
symbol on my back, it's the black widow."
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So, if you're even slightly careful
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you can avoid running into the one spider --
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and it lives close the ground,
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you're walking along, you are
never going to go through
never going to go through
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a spider web where a black widow bites you.
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Spider webs like this, it doesn't build those,
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it builds them down in the corners.
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And its a black widow because
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the female spider eats the male;
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it doesn't care about you.
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So in fact,
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the next time you walk into a spiderweb,
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you don't need to panic and go
with your caveman reaction.
with your caveman reaction.
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The danger is entirely different than the fear.
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How do you get around it, though?
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How do you change your behavior?
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Well, next time you see a spiderweb,
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have a good look, make sure
it's not a black widow spider,
it's not a black widow spider,
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and then walk into it.
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And then you see another spiderweb
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and walk into that one.
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It's just a little bit of fluffy stuff. It's not a big deal.
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And the spider that may come out is
no more threat to you than a lady bug
no more threat to you than a lady bug
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or a butterfly.
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And then I guarantee you if you
walk through 100 spiderwebs
walk through 100 spiderwebs
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you will have changed
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your fundamental human behavior,
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your caveman reaction,
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and you will now be able to walk
in the park in the morning
in the park in the morning
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and not worry about that spiderweb --
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or into your grandma's attic or whatever,
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into your own basement.
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And you can apply this to anything.
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If you're outside on a spacewalk and you're blinded,
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your natural reaction would be to panic, I think.
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It would make you nervous and worried.
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But we had considered all the venom,
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and we had practiced with a whole
variety of different spiderwebs.
variety of different spiderwebs.
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We knew everything there is to know
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about the spacesuit
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and we trained underwater thousands of times.
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And we don't just practice things going right,
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we practice things going wrong all the time,
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so that you are constantly walking
through those spiderwebs.
through those spiderwebs.
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And not just underwater, but
also in virtual reality labs
also in virtual reality labs
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with the helmet and the gloves
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so you feel like it's realistic.
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So when you finally actually
get outside on a spacewalk,
get outside on a spacewalk,
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it feels much different than it would
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if you just went out first time.
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And even if you're blinded,
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your natural, panicky reaction doesn't happen.
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Instead you kind of look around and go,
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"Okay, I can't see,
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but I can hear, I can talk,
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Scott Parazynski is out here with me.
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He could come over and help me."
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We actually practiced incapacitated crew rescue,
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so he could float me like a blimp
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and stuff me into the airlock if he had to.
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I could find my own way back.
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It's not nearly as big a deal.
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And actually, if you keep on crying for a while,
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whatever that gunk was that's
in your eye starts to dilute
in your eye starts to dilute
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and you can start to see again,
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and Houston, if you negotiate with them,
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they will let you then keep working.
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We finished everything on the spacewalk
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and when we came back inside,
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Jeff got some cotton batting and took
the crusty stuff around my eyes,
the crusty stuff around my eyes,
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12:26
and it turned out it was just the anti-fog,
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sort of a mixture of oil and soap, that got in my eye.
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12:32
And now we use Johnson's No More Tears,
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12:35
which we probably should've been using
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right from the very beginning. (Laughter)
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But the key to that is
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by looking at the difference
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between perceived danger and actual danger,
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12:49
where is the real risk?
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What is the real thing that you should be afraid of?
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12:52
Not just a generic fear of bad things happening.
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You can fundamentally change
your reaction to things
your reaction to things
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12:57
so that it allows you to go places
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13:00
and see things and do things
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13:02
that otherwise would be completely denied to you ...
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13:04
where you could see the
hardpan south of the Sahara,
hardpan south of the Sahara,
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13:08
or you can see New York City
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13:10
in a way that is almost dreamlike,
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13:12
or the unconscious gingham
of Eastern Europe fields
of Eastern Europe fields
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or the Great Lakes
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13:18
as a collection of small puddles.
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13:21
You can see the fault lines of San Francisco
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13:24
and the way the water pours out under the bridge,
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13:26
just entirely different
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13:28
than any other way that you could have
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13:30
if you had not found a way to conquer your fear.
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You see a beauty that otherwise
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13:35
never would have happened.
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13:39
It's time to come home at the end.
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13:41
This is our spaceship,
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13:42
the Soyuz, that little one.
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13:44
Three of us climb in,
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13:45
and then this spaceship detaches from the station
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13:47
and falls into the atmosphere.
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13:49
These two parts here
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13:51
actually melt, we jettison them and they burn up
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13:53
in the atmosphere.
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13:54
The only part that survives is the little bullet
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13:56
that we're riding in,
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13:57
and it falls into the atmosphere,
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13:59
and in essence
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1576
14:01
you are riding a meteorite home,
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3561
14:05
and riding meteorites is scary,
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2933
14:08
and it ought to be.
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1513
14:09
But instead of riding into the atmosphere
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2239
14:11
just screaming, like you would
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14:13
if suddenly you found yourself riding a meteorite
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14:15
back to Earth -- (Laughter) --
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2930
14:18
instead, 20 years previously
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14:20
we had started studying Russian,
347
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2616
14:23
and then once you learn Russian, then we
348
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2580
14:25
learned orbital mechanics in Russian,
349
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14:28
and then we learned vehicle control theory,
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2970
14:31
and then we got into the simulator
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1469
14:32
and practiced over and over and over again.
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2572
14:35
And in fact, you can fly this meteorite
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2010
14:37
and steer it and land in about a 15-kilometer circle
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2209
14:39
anywhere on the Earth.
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1424
14:41
So in fact, when our crew was coming back
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2925
14:44
into the atmosphere inside the Soyuz,
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14:46
we weren't screaming, we were laughing;
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2376
14:48
it was fun.
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1068
14:50
And when the great big parachute opened,
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1928
14:51
we knew that if it didn't open
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1219
14:53
there's a second parachute,
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1215
14:54
and it runs on a nice little clockwork mechanism.
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2181
14:56
So we came back, we came thundering back
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2382
14:58
to Earth and this is what it looked like
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1886
15:00
to land in a Soyuz, in Kazakhstan.
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15:03
(Video) Reporter: And you can see one of those
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2023
15:05
search and recovery helicopters, once again
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2716
15:08
that helicopter part of dozen such Russian
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3011
15:11
Mi-8 helicopters.
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4628
15:15
Touchdown -- 3:14 and 48 seconds,
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3909
15:19
a.m. Central Time.
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15:21
CH: And you roll to a stop
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1171
15:22
as if someone threw your
spaceship at the ground
spaceship at the ground
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1669
15:24
and it tumbles end over end,
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1382
15:25
but you're ready for it
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1006
15:26
you're in a custom-built seat,
377
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1376
15:27
you know how the shock absorber works.
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1437
15:29
And then eventually the Russians reach in,
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1991
15:31
drag you out,
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1158
15:32
plunk you into a chair,
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1700
15:34
and you can now look back at
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3443
15:37
what was an incredible experience.
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3182
15:40
You have taken the dreams of that
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1967
15:42
nine-year-old boy,
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1612
15:44
which were impossible
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1639
15:45
and dauntingly scary,
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2890
15:48
dauntingly terrifying,
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1700
15:50
and put them into practice,
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2724
15:53
and figured out a way to reprogram yourself,
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3233
15:56
to change your primal fear
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2128
15:58
so that it allowed you to come back
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2899
16:01
with a set of experiences and a level of inspiration
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3940
16:05
for other people
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1343
16:06
that never could have been possible otherwise.
395
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3126
16:11
Just to finish, they asked me to play that guitar.
396
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6227
16:17
I know this song,
397
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2260
16:19
and it's really a tribute to the genius
398
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5220
16:25
of David Bowie himself,
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2033
16:27
but it's also, I think,
400
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1913
16:28
a reflection of the fact that we are not machines
401
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2438
16:31
exploring the universe,
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1333
16:32
we are people,
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1113
16:33
and we're taking
404
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2164
16:36
that ability to adapt
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2176
16:38
and that ability to understand
406
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1530
16:39
and the ability to take
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1976
16:41
our own self-perception into a new place.
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4359
16:46
(Music)
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5730
16:52
♫ This is Major Tom to ground control ♫
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4673
16:56
♫ I've left forevermore ♫
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5059
17:02
♫ And I'm floating in a most peculiar way ♫
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6807
17:08
♫ And the stars look very different today ♫
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7105
17:15
♫ For here am I floating in the tin can ♫
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7454
17:23
♫ A last glimpse of the world ♫
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6830
17:30
♫ Planet Earth is blue and
there's so much left to do ♫
there's so much left to do ♫
416
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7178
17:38
(Music)
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18963
17:56
Fear not.
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1526
17:58
(Applause)
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13243
18:11
That's very nice of you. Thank you very much.
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3186
18:14
Thank you.
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2167
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Chris Hadfield - AstronautTweeting (and covering Bowie) from the International Space Station last year, Colonel Chris Hadfield reminded the world how much we love space.
Why you should listen
“Good morning, Earth.” That is how Colonel Chris Hadfield, writing on Twitter, woke up the world every day while living aboard the International Space Station. In his five months on the ISS (including three as commander) Hadfield became a worldwide sensation, using social media to make outer space accessible and infusing a sense of wonder into the collective consciousness. Check out his cover version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," sung while floating in his tin can, far above the world ...
Now back on our home planet, he continues to share the excitement of science and space travel. He's the author of the 2014 book An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. As he says, "There are no wishy-washy astronauts. You don't get up there by being uncaring and blasé. And whatever gave you the sense of tenacity and purpose to get that far in life is absolutely reaffirmed and deepened by the experience itself." A photography geek, in 2014 he also published an album of his photos from the shuttle: You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes.
Hadfield is also a font of Canadian firsts: He was Canada’s first shuttle mission specialist, and the first Canadian to board a Russian spacecraft (he helped build the Mir), do a spacewalk (he's done two), and of course, to command the International Space Station.
Chris Hadfield | Speaker | TED.com