Astronaut Chris Hadfield Describes Space Walking — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:03it's the day that if if you look on the
2. 0:05big menu that is your flight plan it's
3. 0:08the day that you're going outside
4. 0:10and
5. 0:11um
6. 0:12you know it's kind of surreal because
7. 0:13you practice it so much but you start
8. 0:15right from the get-go you know today's
9. 0:17the day you go outside you choose uh
10. 0:19what breakfast you're going to eat
11. 0:20because you want a lot of high energy
12. 0:21and stuff that's going to stick with you
13. 0:23for the 10 hours or so you won't be able
14. 0:24to eat you're really um
15. 0:27thorough in the bathroom because you're
16. 0:29going to be working for a long time
17. 0:32you start putting on your diaper and
18. 0:33your suit and you start getting yourself
19. 0:35dressed and it's a multi-hundred step
20. 0:38process and each step is critical and
21. 0:42and you really start building a
22. 0:44spaceship around your body a one-person
23. 0:47spaceship around your body starting with
24. 0:49the cooling garment that goes underneath
25. 0:51right through to uh getting into the
26. 0:54lower torso the heart upper torso
27. 0:56snapping the custom-built gloves in it's
28. 0:59almost as if
29. 1:00the beautiful airplanes that are out
30. 1:02here on the ramp if if you walked out on
31. 1:03the ramp and they started building an
32. 1:05airplane custom-made for your body
33. 1:07around you that's that's what a
34. 1:08spacesuit is like and each step is so
35. 1:11painstaking and careful and then and
36. 1:13then finally you're in your suit
37. 1:14properly you get into the airlock
38. 1:16uh your assistant your intro vehicle
39. 1:19officer closes the hatch you start
40. 1:21dumping all of the air out of the
41. 1:23airlock your suit starts to pressurize
42. 1:25it actually starts to get really quiet
43. 1:28because the all that transmitted noise
44. 1:30and air and people now there's just this
45. 1:33quiet little hum of the fan because the
46. 1:35air is really thin about a third of an
47. 1:37atmosphere and you've been working every
48. 1:39step and you know
49. 1:41like when when tom and tammy
50. 1:43back on sts-80 i think they got to step
51. 1:46445 which was you know turn the great
52. 1:49big lever and open the hatch to go
53. 1:50outside they turned that lever in and
54. 1:52jammed
55. 1:54and they never got outside in a
56. 1:55spacewalk on that shuttle flight so you
57. 1:57know even though this is the day you're
58. 1:59doing a spacewalk
59. 2:00there's no guarantee
60. 2:02so you're working through every one of
61. 2:03those steps very very carefully but
62. 2:04finally it comes to the fourth and 500th
63. 2:07step you open that thing
64. 2:09you push the hatch when you pull the
65. 2:10hatch up and in and you push the cover
66. 2:12out you grab both sides and you you pull
67. 2:15your cell phone into the universe
68. 2:16physically
69. 2:18and
70. 2:19and it is
71. 2:21it's as if
72. 2:22we were sitting here in the dark and you
73. 2:24kind of push yourself up on the chair
74. 2:26and suddenly you found yourself hanging
75. 2:28on the side of a cliff in the middle of
76. 2:30the day like you're out on yosemite
77. 2:32suddenly the transition from being in
78. 2:34this little tight claustrophobic room to
79. 2:37suddenly being outside in the universe
80. 2:41and it was
81. 2:44emotionally overwhelming just
82. 2:47the the juxtaposition of place but also
83. 2:50just the visual onslaught i mean looking
84. 2:52out the windows from the inside is
85. 2:54beautiful but being outside
86. 2:56is a world apart and
87. 2:58you're holding onto the space station
88. 3:01with one hand
89. 3:03you're tethered but but your tether is
90. 3:05invisible to you you know your real
91. 3:07length is one hand and on one side
92. 3:09and one side is the entire universe the
93. 3:12blackness is forever on one side and and
94. 3:14the next thing the world is is just
95. 3:17pouring by like technicolor every color
96. 3:20and texture just ripping by past you and
97. 3:22you're in the middle of that
98. 3:25trying to think what your next step was
99. 3:26supposed to be it's space walking you
100. 3:29should try it space
101. 3:44yeah and i uh i resolved to myself i was
102. 3:48going to be eloquent and leave like a
103. 3:50little verbal diary of everything that
104. 3:51had happened out there and talk about my
105. 3:53transient thoughts and i listened to the
106. 3:55tape afterwards and all it is
107. 3:57wow
108. 4:00the whole time but yeah you're working
109. 4:02and i spent i did two spacewalks during
110. 4:05sds 100 and uh just under 15 hours so 10
111. 4:09times around the world while we're
112. 4:10outside and uh
113. 4:12and built it raining a bunch of snags
114. 4:14i was blinded for a half hour during my
115. 4:16spacewalk with contamination in a suit
116. 4:18worked through a bunch of problems but
117. 4:20we're really successful and we were so
118. 4:22pleased to back away from the space
119. 4:24station with a great big strong canada
120. 4:26arm on the bottom of it that from that
121. 4:28moment on built the rest of the space
122. 4:30station from the shovels piece by piece
123. 4:32so a tremendous experience when you
124. 4:34think back to ed white
125. 4:36and gene cernan
126. 4:38and buzz aldrin
127. 4:40then what their experiences were
128. 4:44in gemini compared to what
129. 4:46the technology
130. 4:49how great were the leaps and the
131. 4:51capability that allowed you to do what
132. 4:53you did and describe it the way you did
133. 4:55compared to what they dealt with
134. 4:57enormous i've also spoken to alex eliano
135. 4:59the first russian to do a spacewalk and
136. 5:02um alexei just about died on his first
137. 5:04spacewalk he had to depressurize his
138. 5:06suit down just to be able to bend enough
139. 5:08to get back inside he he should have
140. 5:10gotten the bends really badly just
141. 5:12because they didn't know what they
142. 5:13didn't know gene cerna had a really
143. 5:15similar experience horrifically
144. 5:17overheating visor fogging up had to
145. 5:19abort a lot of his tasks uh you know
146. 5:22they're just making it up you know and
147. 5:24and trying to figure out what to do
148. 5:26um and then we did all sorts of testing
149. 5:28through the shuttle era of how to build
150. 5:31things all sorts of ideas that we tried
151. 5:33out in the relative safety of the
152. 5:34payload bay where you could come back in
153. 5:36quickly until we hit what we call the
154. 5:39wall of eva of building space station we
155. 5:41knew we were signing up for many many
156. 5:43dozens of spacewalks each one building
157. 5:46on the next and yet we managed to do
158. 5:48that and
159. 5:50we didn't hurt anybody we went through
160. 5:52all those spacewalks we built the space
161. 5:54station and we continued to do so we
162. 5:56continue to learn uh last week we
163. 5:59we
164. 6:00had a pretty interesting learning
165. 6:01experience
166. 6:03we're all talking about that just a few
167. 6:05minutes ago
168. 6:06what happened well it's a really risky
169. 6:08thing walking up space i mean it's a
170. 6:10whole
171. 6:11order of magnitude whisker you take away
172. 6:12the hull of the vehicle
173. 6:14but last week uh one of the astronauts
174. 6:16outside on a spacewalk he started
175. 6:18feeling water on the back of his head
176. 6:20and then and then it was getting wetter
177. 6:21and where it's a weird feeling inside
178. 6:23your space suit while you're out space
179. 6:25walking
180. 6:26and the water started getting worse and
181. 6:28worse he started talking about it but
182. 6:30the water got thick enough and it just
183. 6:31sticks to you sort of like
184. 6:33like jello almost because of the surface
185. 6:35tension and then it came around enough
186. 6:37that it was god in his ears so he
187. 6:38couldn't hear just like having water in
188. 6:40both your ears and then it was coming
189. 6:42around and flowing and got into both his
190. 6:44eyes so he couldn't see and his name's
191. 6:46luca and luca was mostly deaf and mostly
192. 6:49blind last week out on a spacewalk
193. 6:51managed to find his way back in just
194. 6:53barely able to see and by the time he
195. 6:55got back into the airlock he was
196. 6:57he was spitting the water out of his
197. 6:58mouth inside his suit to be able to get
198. 7:01back in we brought him in after about an
199. 7:02hour and a half of a spacewalk and we're
200. 7:04still right now we can't do a spacewalk
201. 7:06on the space station because we don't
202. 7:08know what the problem is with the suit
203. 7:09so even though we've been doing
204. 7:11spacewalks since
205. 7:13ed white and and the folks that you
206. 7:15mentioned and since walking at the
207. 7:16moment we're still learning and it is
208. 7:18still a dangerous thing to do we take it
209. 7:20hugely seriously
210. 7:22it's a it's a beautiful thing to do it's
211. 7:25a vital necessary thing to do on a space
212. 7:26station but we sure don't do it
213. 7:28recreationally it's a hard and risky
214. 7:30thing to do
215. 7:31you're up there