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Astronaut Chris Hadfield Breaks Down Space Movies | Vanity Fair — Transcript

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0:00I found out after they made
0:01Interstellar, some of the folks told me
0:03that when I was on the International
0:05Space Station and I did a a cover of a
0:07of a David Bowie tune and they were
0:09trying to decide how to light Matt
0:10McCanny's face when he was looking
0:13through the windows of his spaceship.
0:14They actually looked at that clip of me
0:16to to see how the light the actual light
0:19on a spaceship looked and then they uh
0:21they sort of mirrored that when they
0:24were lighting Matt's face. It it made me
0:26laugh that art imitating life uh
0:29imitating art. My name is Chris Adfield.
0:32Uh colonel in the Air Force astronaut.
0:34Flew in space three times. Commanded the
0:35International Space Station. Did two
0:37different spacew walks. Used to be a
0:39test pilot, engineer, downhill ski
0:41racer, occasional guitar player. And
0:43we're here today to look at some scenes
0:45from different space movies.
0:51You need to detach. I can't see you
0:53anymore. do it now.
0:58[Music]
1:01This is gravity. And this is the scene
1:04where uh the space shuttle explorer is
1:06orbiting the Earth and they're doing
1:07repairs on the Hubble telescope and they
1:09go through some sort of asteroid debris
1:12field. Okay. Well, that's a nice concept
1:14and the visuals are great, but what
1:17happens is so far from reality that that
1:20I I just I want to turn my head. First
1:23off, the satellite goes whizzing by at
1:25about I don't know, maybe 120 mph.
1:27Satellites are are going 5 miles a
1:30second, 17,000 m an hour. How that thing
1:34where you Oh, you could identify the
1:35satellite going by and then it's like
1:37some big dump truck just suddenly put
1:39this big pile of rubble just upwind of
1:42of the space shuttle and suddenly looks
1:44like an avalanche in space has poured in
1:46front of this shuttle. and they violate
1:48the laws of physics when Sandra Bulock,
1:50she's on the end of the big cannon arm,
1:51the big robot arm, and and it's tumbling
1:54and she releases her little straps and
1:56suddenly, woo, she flies away in a whole
1:58new direction like there was some force
2:00on Sandra that wasn't on the arm. Like,
2:03how come she has a different gravity
2:05than the arm does? And then everybody on
2:07the crew, I mean, the dialogue, they're
2:09all yelling back to Houston as if
2:12somehow Houston's going to help them
2:13right here. Houston, I lost visual Dr.
2:16Stone. And George Clooney is referring
2:18to this other astronaut as Dr. Stone,
2:20like they've they haven't really met
2:22each other yet. And he's asking
2:23permission from somebody, I don't know,
2:26to go and help her out in the I mean,
2:28it's not astronaut behavior. It's not
2:30logical behavior. It's so excraable from
2:33an actual practical demonstration of
2:36what uh what the reality of space flight
2:38is like. The most experienced astronaut
2:40in American history is a woman. It's
2:42Peggy Witson. She's been in space longer
2:44than any other American. She commanded
2:47the International Space Station twice.
2:49She's done 10 spacew walks. She was
2:51NASA's chief astronaut. In this movie,
2:54Sandra Bulock has only been an astronaut
2:56for like uh less than a year. And when
2:59she's faced with a problem, she's
3:00panicking and has no idea what to do.
3:02And George Clooney is driving around
3:04like some sort of space cowboy as the
3:07only person who really knows what's
3:09going on. And it's like they met when
3:11they were out on this spacew walk. And
3:12then it's like he's trying to pick her
3:14up during a spacew walk. prototypes,
3:17even for your pretty blue eyes. And what
3:19is he even doing out there driving
3:21around in his jetpack? I mean, we don't
3:23go outside recreationally is so
3:25different than the actual people that
3:28are exploring space that that devote
3:30their lives to being astronauts that are
3:32actually on the space station right now.
3:34the wonderful human role model examples
3:37we have of people who are doing these
3:40things. I think it set back a little
3:43girl's vision of what a woman astronaut
3:46could be an entire generation. Sandra
3:48Bullock did a great job of portraying
3:50this character in the movie, but I I
3:52just think the character that they wrote
3:54for her was really disappointing. That's
3:56what I would have changed. Get the
3:58characters right. Get it to represent
4:00what astronauts are actually like and
4:02then build the story around that. Don't
4:04just make it the perils of Pauline uh
4:07where she's strapped to the train tracks
4:08and she needs George Clooney to
4:10magically appear next to her to tell her
4:12which book to open to be able to do the
4:14right thing. Real astronauts recognize
4:16the seriousness of their job. The fact
4:19that it's always life or death and that
4:21we're there as the representatives of 7
4:2312 billion people. Everybody's trust in
4:26us to be good at this, to have spent
4:29decades getting good at this. If you
4:32want to know what a spacew walk looks
4:34like, there's never been a better movie
4:36though than Gravity. That opening scene
4:39is magnificent for the visual impact and
4:42the beauty of the silent turning world
4:45and and uh the resolution of each of the
4:48fine things and the lighting. It's
4:50wonderfully good. So, it it gives you
4:52the raw emotional sense of a spacew
4:54walk. Just don't pay attention to what
4:56the astronauts are actually doing.
5:00[Music]
5:03This movie is passengers. So, if you're
5:05going to get on a ship and you're going
5:06to be on it, you know, between stars
5:08going to settle some planet in another
5:10solar system, you can't be floating
5:12weightless the whole time. Who knows
5:14what your babies would be like if they
5:16were conceived and developed and tried
5:17to grow without gravity. You know, their
5:19bodies wouldn't grow, right? So, how do
5:20you make gravity if there's no planet
5:22nearby? One way of course is just like
5:24we do in a little uh experiment where we
5:27spin it in a centrifuge. You can spin
5:29the whole ship and then everybody is
5:30sort of pinned against the outside of
5:32the ship just by the centrifugal force
5:34and that feels sort of like gravity. If
5:37you shut off the the spinner, then it
5:39would continue to spin for quite a
5:41while. There's really nothing to slow
5:43the spin down. And that's one of the big
5:45scenes in passengers. The ship has a
5:47problem. it stops spinning and therefore
5:50everything becomes like on the
5:51International Space Station and starts
5:53floating. So, I'm not sure why when it
5:56starts losing power, the ship suddenly
5:59starts slowing down. You'd actually have
6:00to put big brakes onto it to stop all of
6:03that metal from spinning. I'm not sure
6:06why the ship didn't just sort of bleely
6:09keep on spinning as it as it drove into
6:11the asteroids, but would have been a
6:13worse story if that had happened. So,
6:14let's say, all right, the ship stops
6:15spinning. Now everybody's got no gravity
6:18and one of the characters is in a
6:21swimming pool. So what happens to water
6:23without gravity? On board the
6:25International Space Station, we played
6:26with water all the time. You could
6:28squirt it and it would just float there
6:30in front of you. It naturally with the
6:32surface tension goes to a perfect ball.
6:34That's the easiest shape for it to go
6:36to. So, if you had a swimming pool held
6:39in place by gravity and then the gravity
6:41went away, the water would have some
6:42inertia as the ship slowed down and it
6:45would slosh, but then the water would
6:47almost look like a big blob slowly
6:51forming itself into a ball. And I think
6:54that's quite well shown. And the
6:56weirdest thing is if you were in the
6:58water at the time, how would you even
7:00know which direction to swim? Which way
7:02is the surface if there's no up or down?
7:05Even if you started swimming one
7:07direction, the blob is flexing and the
7:09way you're swimming might be getting
7:10further away from you. So, that was a
7:13very compellingly accurate scene,
7:15assuming there's a swimming pool on
7:16board a spaceship. The way it resolves
7:18though, uh, it kind of bends the edge of
7:21probability cuz if you spin the ship
7:23back up again, then you you generate the
7:25centrifugal force and the water would
7:27get squished back down into the the pool
7:30side of the room. But it would take a
7:32lot of force and time to take a ship
7:35that is stopped, this great big massive
7:37metal thing, and get it spinning again.
7:39It wouldn't be like nothing and then
7:41bang, gravity like it's portrayed in the
7:44movie where suddenly everyone is going
7:45bang into the floor as if gravity was an
7:47onoff switch. But that wouldn't have
7:50been as visually compelling and allowed
7:53the crew member, the young lady, to on
7:55her last dying breath to burst out of
7:56the water and stay alive.
8:01Going in. We're coming in hot.
8:05We're coming in hot.
8:08Oh yeah. Okay. This movie is Armageddon,
8:12which is sort of the disastrous end of
8:15everything. And I think that's an
8:16appropriate name for this movie. I
8:18haven't seen it since I turned away from
8:20it when it first came into the theaters.
8:21this scene here where where the the two
8:24space shuttles are landing on an
8:26asteroid, you know, with the with the
8:28the deep sea worker and blaster guys who
8:31are going to blow up the asteroid so it
8:32doesn't destroy Earth. Uh there are so
8:34many things wrong with this that I don't
8:35even really know where to begin. Let's
8:37start with the fact that uh they're
8:39talking to mission control real time.
8:41There's no lag. How did suddenly time
8:43and space change? You get instantaneous
8:45communication all the way out to this
8:46asteroid with no lag. And then one of
8:49them says, "We're coming in hot. We're
8:51coming in hot." Relative to what? What
8:54are you talking about? And how do you
8:56know that? Do you have some magical
8:58landing information about an asteroid so
9:00that you know you're going faster than
9:02you meant you were supposed to? And then
9:03if you watch as the shuttle commands to
9:05land, it flares. It like it it it slows
9:08down so it can touch down on the
9:10asteroid like by pulling back on the
9:12stick. There's air on an asteroid. I
9:14mean, what what made that magically
9:16happen? And there's these weird video
9:19game displays in the space shuttle that
9:21allow you to suddenly you're flying in
9:22in the game Asteroids and the crew is uh
9:26it everybody's panicked and yelling at
9:28each other.
9:30The the big engines on the back are
9:31constantly running. Where's the fuel
9:33coming from? There's no gas tank. So
9:35they'd be accelerating the whole time.
9:37So why I mean what are they doing that
9:39for? It is as atrociously bad as any
9:43space movie that was ever done. It's so
9:45bad. It's It's tragic comic. I'm glad
9:47they safely landed on the asteroid, but
9:50um but it's just atrocious. What's the
9:53abboard force? 7500.
9:56Anything more than that in the map could
9:58tip. This is the Martian. I like how the
10:00one crew member is wearing his name tag
10:02in the middle of his chest. It's a
10:04little far along in the mission to be
10:05wearing your name tag. Ready?
10:10Mars is an interesting planet uh in that
10:13it has dust storms. We can see them
10:15through our telescopes from Earth. And
10:16some of those dust storms envelop huge
10:19sections of Mars simultaneously. This is
10:21unfortunately about the worst part of of
10:24the whole movie, The Martian, is that
10:26the atmosphere is so incredibly thin on
10:28Mars. It's almost like the very edge of
10:31space. On Earth, you would have to be
10:33like 100,000 ft up to get to how thin
10:36the air is on Mars. And think of the
10:38people that go to the top of Everest,
10:40which is only 28,000 ft up. Almost all
10:43of them need oxygen just to be able to
10:44to get to the top of Everest. And this
10:46is, you know, four times as high as
10:48that. If the air was blowing incredibly
10:51fast, there'd be so few air molecules
10:54going by you that you'd hardly even feel
10:56them. And there's no way you could pick
10:57up all those big pieces and and blow
11:00them and knock Mark Wattney over. And
11:02it's a slow cumulative uh change of
11:06seasons on Mars. The people that made
11:07the movie just decided the gravity on
11:09Mars is the same as the gravity on
11:11Earth. even though it's actually only
11:1338% of the gravity. So Matt wouldn't be
11:16quite that hunky on on Mars. He wouldn't
11:19be solidly on the floor. He'd only weigh
11:21onethird as much as he does on Earth. So
11:23he'd be a lot more bouncy moving around
11:25and and things would move differently.
11:27Mark Wattney, played by Matt Damon, is
11:29uh trying to find a way to make enough
11:31food to last until he can be rescued.
11:33All he's really got are potatoes, but
11:34potatoes are simple and they grow and
11:36multiply. So he needs a few things. He
11:39needs uh water. He needs nutrientrich
11:42soil. He needs heat and he needs oxygen.
11:45I'm going to have to science the
11:47out of this. It makes sense actually
11:49that uh they're growing plants on Mars.
11:52If you're going to live there, you can't
11:54bring everything in in little tins and
11:56dehydrated packages. You got to grow
11:58food where you go. We've been growing
12:00stuff on spaceships for decades. And so
12:03the movie ends up being very good for
12:05how could you get that little
12:07environment for one human being and his
12:09and and his crop of potatoes to to grow
12:12on Mars. The idea of using the the human
12:16crap from outside in order to harvest
12:18the the nutrients that you need for
12:20potatoes, just like putting manure on on
12:23crops at home here on Earth. how he used
12:26existing chemicals, whether it was
12:27rocket fuel or whatever, they're all
12:29just sort of hydrocarbons, you know,
12:30things with with hydrogen and oxygen and
12:33carbon in them. And so, so long as you
12:35can get the right chemical reaction, you
12:37can get out the things you need. And if
12:39you think about it, that's sort of what
12:40happened on Earth. We didn't used to
12:42have oxygen on Earth. It's just a
12:45chemical process that created our
12:47atmosphere here on Earth. And Mark
12:48Wattney, Matt Damon, is sort of
12:51hastening that process on Mars. I am the
12:54greatest botonist on this planet. One of
12:57the best parts of The Martian is that it
12:58came from the book by Andy Weir. He's a
13:01really smart guy and an engineer, but he
13:02also crowdsourced the science. As he was
13:05writing the book, he put it out there
13:07and said, "Hey everybody, tell me what's
13:09wrong with with my science here. What am
13:10I doing wrong?" As an astronaut, Mark
13:13Wattney could have been just any of the
13:15people in the astronaut office. It's
13:16that type of person. the the deep
13:19academic background, the strong
13:20operational sense of what you're going
13:22to do next. I think it gave people a
13:24sense of what being an astronaut is
13:27like. It there's some hard, sad,
13:28difficult parts, but there's some
13:30ridiculously fun and and almost always
13:33joyful parts to it and a great sense of
13:35camaraderie better than almost any space
13:38movie. The Martian shows that. Oh,
13:42Apollo 13.
13:44Apollo 13 tells the story of an
13:46explosion that actually happened on the
13:48way to the moon. Really good movie.
13:50Maybe the most realistic of all of the
13:53space movies. Uh, this is Houston. Uh,
13:56say again, please, Houston, we have a
13:58problem. When you're talking on the
13:59radio, of course, the first word you
14:01have to say is who are you talking to?
14:02So that's why from a spaceship the first
14:05word we say is Houston or Moscow or
14:07Tokyo or whoever we're talking to.
14:09Mission control is sitting there and if
14:11they hear the commander of the ship say
14:13Houston we have a problem it's an
14:15understatement but it has a huge impact.
14:18All normal operations cease and
14:21everybody is now listening to hear what
14:23the commander is going to say next
14:25looking at their data like crazy. It's a
14:27wonderful succinct way to phrase it and
14:31all space commanders since then, self
14:33included, have used that phrase when
14:36needed because it it uh it has the
14:38desired effect.
14:41Yeah, Jim. Uh could you check your CO2
14:43gauge for us? If you've lost a bunch of
14:46your oxygen and a lot of your
14:47purification equipment, how do you get
14:49the carbon dioxide out of the air on
14:51board a spaceship? You need some sort of
14:53scrubbing equipment. And when you've had
14:55a malfunction, maybe it's not going to
14:56work the way you planned. But they had
14:58the lunar lander. It had its own carbon
15:01dioxide scrubbing system. The trouble is
15:03they were built by different companies.
15:04The pieces weren't interchangeable. The
15:07engineers recognized the problem early.
15:09They present it to the flight director
15:10Ed Harris doing a great job of playing
15:12Gan CR and Jean saying, "Okay, I
15:15understand the problem. Now go fix it."
15:17That happens every day in space flight.
15:21Maybe not that dramatically, but I
15:22worked in mission control. It's this
15:24great detective hunt every day of how
15:27can we take what we hope to do which is
15:30now being ruined by the reality of
15:32everything going wrong and we're
15:33constantly reinventing stuff and all the
15:36people in the back rooms are trying to
15:37figure out the solutions to the
15:39problems. But the way it's portrayed in
15:40Apollo 13, it was a terrific dramatic
15:43example of it but it's almost a textbook
15:46of of what actually happens to solve
15:49problems to get something done. Ron
15:50Howard when he made the movie. I mean,
15:52he tried to restrict the dialogue
15:55between mission control and the space
15:57capsule to be actually what the
15:59transcripts of what the crew had said
16:01back then. Ron actually came to Houston,
16:03spent time with us there, saw what the
16:05houses were like. He came down to
16:07launch. He he really wanted to get to
16:09know what astronauts and and everybody
16:11else at the Johnson Space Center and in
16:13the space business were like. I really
16:15admire the team that put together Apollo
16:1813. And I I love the movie. I think I
16:20think it does a great job of showing
16:23what space flight is like, especially at
16:25that moment in time. Time is represented
16:28here as a physical dimension. You have
16:30worked out that you can exert a force
16:32across spaceime gravity. Well, I'm just
16:35confused now. This is interstellar. If
16:38you get sucked into a black hole, uh I
16:41mean, people are worried about the
16:43riptide at the shore. You know, this
16:46this is like a riptide. uh a
16:48tyrannosauride. This this is beyond our
16:51ability to imagine the scope of the
16:53forces that are involved. And not just a
16:56a force like gravity holding us down to
16:58the surface of the earth, but a change
17:00in gravity with with distance because
17:02gravity the strength of it is
17:04proportionate to to where the black hole
17:06is. Closer you get, more gravity you
17:08get. It would be just tearing everything
17:10to pieces until eventually the the
17:13forces are so high it even sucks light
17:15into it. It's not something you can
17:17build yourself a tough little capsule
17:19and and somehow penetrate. There's
17:21there's nothing we know of right now
17:23that could withstand the destructive
17:25force of being near a black hole. How
17:27that's going to be portrayed in a movie,
17:29you can kind of do whatever you want
17:30with it for now. Love is the one thing
17:33we're capable of perceiving that
17:35transcends dimensions of time and space.
17:37Nowhere in a mathematical equation is
17:39there a symbol for love. It'd be a nice
17:41little heart, I guess, but I don't know
17:42how you'd multiply it or divide it.
17:44Maybe for the arc of a artistic story,
17:47then love is the only way to get through
17:50to the end to end up at that place
17:52looking through into his daughter's
17:54library rack. Uh it's it's very
17:57emotionally nice, but um I'm not sure
18:00that Einstein or Steven Hawking would
18:02have would have followed the logic. I
18:04brought myself here.
18:07We're here to communicate with a
18:09three-dimensional world. So, how do you
18:11deal with time travel, which is
18:12essentially what happened here? It
18:14becomes so confusing. It's almost like
18:16the movie needs like uh footnotes and
18:18scientific subtitles here so that you
18:20can clue in the viewer as to what's
18:22happening. Also, there's no point in
18:23yelling through your spacuit. Nobody can
18:25hear you outside your spacuit. I'm also
18:27really confused just by the physicality
18:29of what we're looking at. I mean,
18:30suddenly he's in some sort of huge
18:32filing cabinet, the endless land of
18:34Venetian blinds. the movie creators had
18:37some specific thing in mind trying to
18:38take the physics and the math and make
18:40them threedimensionally compelling. It
18:42still ends up for me just being quite
18:45puzzling. Interstellar has a fascinating
18:47history of birth. It was the brainchild
18:51of one of the best physicists in the
18:53world, a guy named Kip Thorne. And Kip
18:55was trying to figure out the math of
18:57what happens around a black hole. And he
18:59hired a company called Double Negative.
19:01and they took his math and turned it
19:03into the raw visuals of what a black
19:05hole would look like. And that became
19:06the genesis of the movie. It's a real
19:08interesting coupling of a science
19:10fiction story based very much in an
19:12experiment of how to visualize the
19:15non-intuitive complexity of what the
19:18environment would look like around the
19:20weird singularity that is a black hole.
19:22The reason the time is dilated for the
19:25the crew in Interstellar is just because
19:28of the incredible change of gravity, the
19:31distortion of time due to the huge
19:33gravitational forces. But what that
19:35means is if you get going faster and
19:37faster and faster, time passes
19:39differently for you than someone who's
19:41not going that fast. And so while I was
19:43on the space station, I had some people
19:45do the math to see was I aging faster or
19:48slower than people on Earth. I'm
19:49actually younger than I would have been
19:52if I stayed on Earth for the whole 6
19:54months. Every month I aged about 1
19:57millisecond less than people on Earth.
19:59So after 6 months I was 6 milliseconds
20:01younger than than my family. Doesn't
20:04mean anything. But if you extrapolate it
20:05to the speeds and the physical
20:08conditions of Interstellar, then
20:11suddenly the difference becomes huge.
20:13I've waited years where a fixed amount
20:16of time for Matt McCahee and his crew
20:18would be a wildly different amount of
20:20time for people who are in a different
20:22set of circumstances. It doesn't
20:24intuitively make sense. You just have to
20:27sort of accept that the world that we
20:29live in is only one particular set of
20:32physical circumstances and some wildly
20:35different ones exist in other places in
20:37the uh in our galaxy and and in the
20:39universe.
20:44This movie is First Man, the story of
20:47the very first human being to walk on
20:48the moon. The story of Neil Armstrong.
20:52Didn't that alimter say he was at 45,000
20:54ft before astronauts become astronauts?
20:58They always have some other
20:59significantly complex technical
21:01profession. A lot of them used to be
21:02test pilots. And that includes all three
21:05of the astronauts in Apollo 11,
21:07including obviously Neil Armstrong. And
21:09there's the opening scene in the movie
21:11where he is flying an X-15 right at the
21:14edge of the envelope, right at the edge
21:15of its capability. One of the biggest
21:17problems with the scene is sound. It's
21:19sort of like he's in in a pickup truck
21:21driving across a field with this big
21:24whiny noise that tells you just how fast
21:27he's going all the time. And you can
21:28hear it sort of going up and down like
21:30maybe there's a big, I don't know,
21:31piston engine running nearby. It's all
21:34completely wrong. You don't hear that in
21:36the cockpit. And the vibration it's it's
21:39there's so much little rattly vibration.
21:41Where's that coming from? He's in a
21:43bullet plane with a rocket motor on the
21:45back. The vibrations would be
21:47imperceptibly small. Airplanes,
21:49especially airplanes like that, fly
21:50really smoothly. Also, he keeps going in
21:52and out of cloud. He's at 45,000 ft.
21:55What clouds are there at 45,000 ft?
21:57There's maybe the occasional
21:59thunderstorm that sticks up that high,
22:00but you would not fly the X-15 through
22:03one of those thunderstorms. And then it
22:05goes from this weird sort of rattly kind
22:08of noise like like it's some old jalap
22:10to then suddenly dead quiet. Then what
22:13happened there? Where did all that sound
22:15come from? And where did it all go? And
22:17as the pilot also he's wearing a
22:19pressure suit. He's got a headset on.
22:21He's inside a cockpit. You don't hear
22:23any of that as he pulls back on the
22:25stick and starts going up to get the
22:28X-15 up high. That that's fine. Once
22:30your rocket lights, then you want to
22:31start going up where the air gets
22:32thinner and thinner. Well, the sky,
22:34oddly enough, gets lighter and lighter.
22:37Like the sky goes from sort of a normal
22:39blue to like this light blue. That's the
22:41opposite of what happens as you ride a
22:43rocket up to space. It goes from light
22:45blue to dark blue because there's less
22:47and less air to refract the light till
22:50eventually it goes black. In this clip,
22:52for whatever reason, it goes from from
22:53regular sky to light blue, light blue,
22:55and then suddenly, bang, the sky turns
22:57black as if you like went around a
22:59corner or something. the front of the
23:01X-15 starts glowing with the heat. Well,
23:04that that's because of the friction of
23:06the air as he's going fast. It doesn't
23:08happen at the right time, you know, up
23:09where the air is the thinnest. And they
23:11didn't really show what speed he was
23:13going. The time it takes to heat the
23:15front of an airplane and the amount of
23:16air molecules that have to hit it to
23:18cause the friction and the drag to make
23:20all that all that heating and make the
23:22metal glow a different color. It almost
23:24looked like he got to space and then the
23:26nose got hot. and and those two things
23:28aren't related to each other. What
23:30disappointed me most about First Man was
23:33how sad everybody was. Everybody inside
23:36was glum and spaceflight is joyful. It's
23:40hilarious. It's magic. You can fly.
23:43You're you're seeing the whole world.
23:45These guys were going to the moon. They
23:47had a lot of responsibility. But where
23:49is the spark of of joy that is there in
23:53every second of the time that you're on
23:55board a spaceship? The distance from
23:57launch to orbit, we know. Redstone mass,
23:59we know. Mercury capsule weight, we
24:01know. You did the math. I look beyond. I
24:05really like the movie Hidden Figures. It
24:07tells a story that most people don't
24:10know about. It highlights a group of
24:12people that did really pivotal work to
24:14get us into space at the beginning. And
24:16it's a really nice human story and and
24:17it's really well acted. There's one
24:19scene where the character Katherine
24:21Johnson, who's of course one of the real
24:23brilliant human computers uh that that's
24:26in the movie, is trying to solve one of
24:28the math problems you have to solve for
24:30orbital mechanics and getting people
24:32into orbit and and and doing it
24:34accurately enough. It's super
24:35oversimplified and dramatized and it's
24:38like the entire staff of NASA is 15
24:40people in this one room somewhere. And
24:42the part played by Kevin Cosner, he's
24:44like the leader of this team and he
24:46seems to be the administrator of NASA
24:49and he seems to be the flight director
24:51of the specific mission. But you got to
24:53simplify things to tell a story and I
24:55guess that's okay. But people sitting in
24:58front of blackboards postulating and
25:00coming up with ideas, that's real.
25:02That's realistic. That's how we figure
25:04out a lot of those things. Maybe it's
25:06not new math at all. It could be old
25:09math.
25:11oil is meth. There's nothing unusual
25:14about saying that this is old math. All
25:16math is old. It's just whether we've
25:18figured out what the mathematical
25:20principles are or not. One of the guys
25:22who figured out a lot of the math was uh
25:24a guy named Silkovski who was a math
25:27teacher in the 1800s. He figured out
25:29space flight with his mathematics by
25:31candle light in his house in in rural
25:33Russia. and Oiler came up with some
25:35equations that are absolutely necessary
25:37for us to be able to do the predicting
25:39properly in order to do rendevous and
25:42and burn the engines at the right time
25:43that you're going to get to where you
25:45want to go. But I love the interplay of
25:48the bright minds and the kind of quirky
25:50people that actually allowed uh early
25:53space flight to happen. But we have what
25:56looks like unidentified rovers
25:58approaching our position. Possible
26:00pirate activity. And I got a couple of
26:01VIPs with me.
26:04This is the movie Ad Astra, the chase
26:06scene on the surface of the moon between
26:08the bad guys who are in black moon
26:10rovers and the good guys who are in
26:12white moon rovers, making it easy for
26:14those of us on Earth to follow along.
26:17Guns work fine without air. Guns don't
26:20need oxygen to work really. If you think
26:22of what happens inside a bullet, you
26:24know, there's this striker in the back
26:25and it it causes a chemical explosion
26:28and it's the exploding gas inside the
26:31confines of the rifle that make the
26:33projectile come out the end really fast.
26:35That doesn't count on gravity and it
26:37doesn't count on Earth's atmosphere. So,
26:40a gun would work fine on the moon. In
26:42fact, we actually carried guns on board
26:45uh the Russian spaceship that I flew.
26:48And when I went to the Russian space
26:49station Mir in 1995,
26:52the ships that came up had guns in them,
26:55but they were in the rescue pack because
26:57if you did an emergency de-orbit from
26:59the space station, you might land
27:01anywhere on Earth and you might land in
27:03a place where there were, you know,
27:05grizzly bears. And so there was this
27:07specially designed gun that had two shot
27:09barrels and one uh gun barrel so that
27:12you could fire two shots at the grizzly
27:14bear and and maybe the last one for
27:17yourself. I don't know. But we've had
27:18guns in space before. Never fired one in
27:21space that that I've ever heard of. On
27:23the moon, there's about 16th gravity as
27:25there is on Earth. So the bullet's going
27:27to fall more slowly than it would on
27:30Earth. It's going to take longer to hit.
27:31So that means the bullet with the same
27:33speed horizontally would go further.
27:35It'd go further around the moon. It's
27:37possible, I guess, if you had a big
27:38enough gun that it would get to the
27:41speed where it might actually be able to
27:42escape from the moon. it could get to
27:44escape velocity where it was going so
27:46fast that by the time the pull of
27:49gravity of the moon kept bringing it
27:51down, it would be far enough away that
27:53it would have the inertia to float away
27:55from the moon forever. I haven't done
27:57the math to figure out exactly what that
27:58speed is. I'm sure we could make a big
28:00enough gun to do that.
28:04Why are they driving Apollo rovers
28:06around in the future? Those rovers were
28:09built in a great big hurry during the
28:11Apollo program to try and let the
28:13exploring astronauts have slightly
28:15better range and explore more of the
28:17moon. We would not build rovers like
28:19that in the future. That's like if if
28:21you were watching some movie in the
28:24future and and they brought in a Model T
28:27Ford as the vehicle that everyone's
28:28racing around in. It's like why are they
28:30driving Model T Fords? You know, those
28:32were from the 1920s. That doesn't make
28:34any sense. As you watch this scene,
28:36where is all the noise coming from? You
28:39are in a perfectly empty vacuum on the
28:42moon. So, as you watch this scene, um,
28:45it's really noisy. You can hear the
28:47vehicles bouncing along and you can hear
28:49the guns being fired and you can hear
28:50them hitting and everything. There's no
28:52air on the moon. If you make a noise on
28:55the moon, there's no way that the the
28:58pressure wave can be carried anywhere.
29:00You can't hear anything that that
29:03doesn't happen inside your ship or
29:06inside your suit. Like it's as if there
29:08were, I don't know, Mel Gibson driving
29:10around in some sort of dystopian future
29:12and you can hear the great big uh
29:14vehicles behind them. It would be
29:16perfectly silent the whole time. All you
29:18would hear was everybody breathing and
29:20talking to each other. So, um I guess it
29:23makes it familiar for people, but it's
29:26wrong.
29:30Perhaps the greatest space movie of all
29:32time, 2001, a space odyssey. Arthur C.
29:35Clark's great book, amazingly portrayed
29:39uh in the late60s by Stanley Kubri and
29:41his team. When I came back for my first
29:43space flight and sat in my living room
29:46with my wife, I remember telling her it
29:48was amazing how you see the world, the
29:50speed you're heading over the world, the
29:52big curve of it. It's exactly like they
29:54guessed it would be when they showed it
29:56in 2001. the imagery of it a as that
29:59ship that that left Earth and and is
30:02coming up to to dock with the rotating
30:04space station, the sort of gigantic slow
30:08ballet of spaceships. At the time, I
30:11remember thinking it's like, you know,
30:13elephants mating, this big ponderous,
30:16careful, three-dimensional activity with
30:19a specific purpose in mind. That that's
30:21that's what it felt like to fly a ship
30:23up to try and dock with a space station.
30:25the little pen floating out of the
30:26passenger on board who has fallen
30:28asleep. And now the the flight attendant
30:31walking down the aisle and having velcro
30:33on the bottom of her shoes matching the
30:35velcro of the floor. The inside of the
30:36International Space Station, it's it's
30:38there's Velcro everywhere, anywhere you
30:40want to stick anything, including that
30:42pen. There's Velcro on the pen with the
30:44with the one type of Velcro and and the
30:46wall is the, you know, pile or hook. She
30:48did sort of stumble, though, which was
30:49obviously a gravity thing if you watch
30:51it really close. But the idea of placing
30:53one foot then placing another foot and
30:55peeling them almost like uh someone
30:57walking up a wall of ice or something
30:59that was an interesting solution to the
31:01problem. I think it's beautifully
31:03artistically and quite scientifically
31:06portrayed. It It's great.
31:10This movie is Wall-E really designed for
31:12kids. Very sweet. In this scene, Wall-E
31:16is out there flying around in space and
31:18having fun using a fire extinguisher.
31:20and Eve, the more advanced robot has own
31:24propulsion system. Uh, I'm a little
31:26confused about Eve because Eve's head
31:28isn't attached to the body, but there's
31:30this weird sort of red cable umbilical
31:32on the outside. What intrigued me was
31:35how the animators moved Wall-E around by
31:38firing a fire extinguisher. And it would
31:40work just fine. You get a fire
31:42extinguisher, you pull the trigger, all
31:45that stuff flies out of the fire
31:46extinguisher. And if you don't brace
31:48yourself, it would sort of push you over
31:50on Earth. If you're floating in space
31:52and you can't brace yourself at all,
31:53it's going to propel you just like a
31:55little rocket motor. And and they were
31:57clever enough to make sure that Wall-E
31:59always got it down to the center of his
32:03body. Cuz if you did it up by your head,
32:05then it would push you off center. You
32:07just sort of pin wheel. But if you can
32:09push it through the middle of your mass,
32:11middle of your body, then it's going to
32:13move you in a in a straight line. and
32:15he's very careful to constantly move the
32:17nozzle to the right spot. It's quite
32:19cute and quite a nice little study of uh
32:22of orbital mechanics. The very first
32:24American spacew walk when Ed White went
32:26out, he actually had one of those
32:28squirters with him. Not a fire
32:29extinguisher, but a little handheld uh
32:32squirter that he could maneuver around
32:35with. Eventually, we found it was an
32:36impractical way to move. You're better
32:38just to put handholds on the ship or
32:39wear a jetpack. But that same thing that
32:41Wall-Ally's using, that was actually
32:43used by the first American to ever walk
32:45in space. Ladies and gentlemen, Mercury.
32:49This is Sunshine, a movie about a crew
32:51having to reignite the sun. But in this
32:54scene, the crew recognize that they're
32:57going to see Mercury go between them and
32:59the sun. It's almost like a tiny little
33:02version of an eclipse. And people love
33:04eclipses, you know, it's it's almost
33:06mystical. It's it's a neat thing to see.
33:08And so I think that would be natural.
33:10The crew would love to see Mercury
33:12highlighted against the light of the
33:14sun. In the scene though, Mercury is
33:16whipping around the sun. I mean, just in
33:18the time it takes those people to sit
33:20and look out the window, it goes
33:22probably an eighth of the way around the
33:23sun. In Earth days, Mercury takes like
33:26uh months, 88 days or something to go
33:29around the sun. So, you wouldn't
33:32perceive the motion relative to the sun
33:35just looking out the window like they
33:36are. Also, the sun is uh stupendously
33:41bright. How are you seeing Mercury
33:43against the sun? It's it's like staring
33:46at at the headlights of a car and trying
33:48to see, you know, uh marble or
33:50something. You you just your eyes would
33:52be so overpowered by the brilliance of
33:54the sun, unless they've got some really
33:56great special filters somehow on their
33:58viewing screen in their ship. What's
34:00nice about the scene is the sense of
34:03wonder, the awe at the majesty of the
34:06reality of the rest of the universe and
34:08seeing it firsthand. I've been around
34:10the world uh 2,650
34:13times or so, and I never once could see
34:17enough of it. During my first spacew
34:20walk, while I was outside in the dark,
34:23we actually were far enough south that
34:24we went through the Earth's aurora. It
34:27is so fantastically beautiful and such a
34:30a raw artistic human experience. To look
34:33at the northern lights is like magic. To
34:35be in them, to to surf on them, that's
34:38that's beyond magic. It's it's surreal.
34:41My last orbit of the world was even more
34:44rich and magnificent and and awe
34:47inspiring than than all of the ones
34:49before it. The unheralded beauty of our
34:53planet and of where it sits and the
34:55environment that we're in is so
34:58constantly magnificent that when you're
35:00looking at it, you talk in hush tones,
35:03you know, like you've walked into a
35:04giant forest or or the most beautiful
35:08cathedral on earth. You don't you don't
35:10talk in a big brassy voice there. You're
35:13reverential of where you are. And I
35:15think that little scene gets some of
35:18that, the reverence and and
35:20understanding of the both the minuscule
35:23nature of being a human in the enormity
35:26of the universe, but also the enormity
35:29of being able to see it in that way. The
35:32the huge awareness that we have of of
35:36our ability to try and interpret and
35:38understand it. I think they portrayed
35:40that well. I'm Chris Hadfield. I love
35:43space movies. It was nice to have a
35:44chance to look at look at some of them
35:46with you. I look forward to every new
35:47space movie that comes out and hopefully
35:49maybe some of the things that I've said
35:50here will help you see each of the new
35:52space movies that you see through an
35:54astronaut's eyes. Happy viewing.

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