DAWSON CREEK, B.C. – Mile Zero City had a much-anticipated guest this weekend at the Encana Events Centre – none other than Col. Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space.
Col. Hadfield was a keynote speaker at the What If? Conference, hosted by Rotary District 5370.
Members of the media, from print and broadcast outlets, were invited to ask him two questions each before the show started. Col. Hadfield had a unique and interesting answer to each of the inquiries.
Energetic City got the chance to ask Col. Hadfield these two questions:
As a retired astronaut now, how do you feel about the news that there seems to be water on mars? Can you expand on that?
One of the most fundamental questions in history – I think every shepherd who sat out at night, and looked up at the sky, thought, “Are we alone? Is earth it? Or is there life somewhere else?”
Everyone who imagines UFOs, or watches ET or Star Trek, or Star Wars, they’re all kind of wondering: “Are we alone, or not?” And we’ve never found any evidence to show there’s life anywhere besides Earth. Because lots of people imagine stuff, and we wish there was, but there’s no hard evidence yet.
But this week, we saw water – proved that water is flowing on the surface of Mars. And everywhere we have water and heat, we have life. Everywhere. Look under your sink. Anywhere you have water, you have life.
There’s no guarantee there’s life on Mars. But the way we understand life, it’s becoming a more and more likely place to look. And if we can find even a fossil, or even the most primitive microbe or whatever, on Mars … we know there’s life on earth. And if we can find life on Mars, that means there is life everywhere – it means the universe is full of life.
Water is not the final discovery, but it is a really, sort of entrancing, sort of a very leading … it’s the type of thing you’d like to find.
That little rover driving around is just not capable of doing all the investigation. Either we need to send better rovers, or maybe eventually, we’ll have to send people to go and look and answer that fundamental question.
My next question is a less serious one – When you returned to earth’s atmosphere, did you drop things?
I flew in space three times, twice on the US Space Shuttle, and once on the Russian Soyuz.
On my third flight, which was the long flight, my body got completely used to living in space. So when I came back, there was no confusion about whether I was in space or whether I was on Earth. As soon as I got back, my body knew I was back.
But on my first two flights, they were short and I think my body was still confused as to whether or not I was on Earth or not. When I woke up the next morning, I could feel myself floating above my bed, even though I wasn’t – because my body hadn’t settled as to where I was.
When I first got back, I did try to float a video tape to Jerry Ross. And both of us, like two bad, slow-motion, Godzilla monsters watched like, “Nooo!” … picked up this tape off the ground. So, yeah, it’s a fairly common astronaut thing to get back and forget there’s gravity.
Listen to the full interview, featuring other questions, here: