GOING BLIND DURING A SPACEWALK - Astronaut Chris Hadfield on London Real — Transcript

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1. 0:00I I was U on my first space walk I was
2. 0:03out with a guy named Scott perzinski
3. 0:04who's who's climbed Everest and amazing
4. 0:08guy medical doctor commercial airline
5. 0:09pilot brilliant fellow um he and I were
6. 0:12out on a spacewalk together and I was
7. 0:15working away and suddenly my left eye
8. 0:17just seared with pain and stopped
9. 0:19working like slammed itself shut and you
10. 0:21can't rub it on anything you can't reach
11. 0:23it because it's in a helmet so I just
12. 0:25kind of like H you know just tough it
13. 0:27out what am I going to do I got
14. 0:28something in my eye I can't get it out
15. 0:29of my eye
16. 0:31what you you you could call down to
17. 0:32Houston but what are they going to do
18. 0:34you know they're just going to say so
19. 0:35can you live with it so I just stayed
20. 0:38quiet about it live with it but your eye
21. 0:41tears up so badly try to fight whatever
22. 0:43the contamination is and the tears don't
23. 0:45drain because there's no gravity so you
24. 0:47just have this big bigger and bigger
25. 0:49ball of contaminated whatever it was
26. 0:52until eventually the ball gets so big
27. 0:54that it goes across the bridge of your
28. 0:56nose and contaminates your other eye
29. 0:58just from the surface tension of the
30. 1:00tear flowing across so then I was truly
31. 1:02blinded couldn't see out of either eye
32. 1:04and it's not like my eyes were gone they
33. 1:06were just contaminated so bad that I
34. 1:08could not even if I forced my eyelids
35. 1:10open against the pain I couldn't see
36. 1:12there was too much MC so uh so I had to
37. 1:16stop working then I can't follow the
38. 1:19timeline anymore I got to call down to
39. 1:20Houston let them Panic about it and you
40. 1:23know work all their problems and of
41. 1:24course they're going to try and give me
42. 1:25all the best advice they can talk to
43. 1:28Scott could could could be a pretty uh
44. 1:32terrifying moment if you weren't ready
45. 1:34for it but Scott and I had gone through
46. 1:36all the various training all of all of
47. 1:39the visualization we could think of and
48. 1:42while he and I had been underwater in
49. 1:44the pool in in Houston Texas at the
50. 1:46Johnson Space Center so many times 400
51. 1:49hours I think underwater I mean divide
52. 1:51that by 24 that's a lot of days
53. 1:54underwater um one of the many thousands
54. 1:57of things we'd practice was what if one
55. 1:59of us gets incapacitated what if you get
56. 2:01the bends or you have a heart attack or
57. 2:04your calm system quits or you have a
58. 2:06horrible cramp or or whatever you punch
59. 2:09a little hole in your sup what if one of
60. 2:11us gets
61. 2:12incapacitated how are we going to react
62. 2:15and so you practice we call it
63. 2:17incapacitated crew rescue you practice
64. 2:19being able to hustle over getting the
65. 2:20person um working with their various
66. 2:23tethers and Link UPS uh and then
67. 2:25bringing them like like like a Macy's
68. 2:28day parade Flo you know and bringing
69. 2:30them back and then stuffing them into
70. 2:32the airlock which is not that easy cuz
71. 2:34it's a small round hole and try to
72. 2:36squeeze the person in and then crawling
73. 2:38in with them and getting them hook up to
74. 2:39the ship's oxygen and cooling
75. 2:41Communications so that they can stay
76. 2:43alive uh we practice that and our our
77. 2:47trainers would sometimes they'd come on
78. 2:49the private Loop and say okay pretend
79. 2:52you just passed out so that the other
80. 2:54person had to even go hey Chris how you
81. 2:56doing Chris Chris can you hear me and
82. 2:59then having to follow all the reactions
83. 3:01to make it as realistic as possible so
84. 3:03when I was actually blinded it wasn't so
85. 3:06bad CU like I can still talk and hear
86. 3:08and Scott and I are discussing and I'm
87. 3:10still holding on I just can't
88. 3:12see and it's not going to be that hard
89. 3:15to get me back into the airlock if
90. 3:16that's the only thing we can think of
91. 3:18but we popped open the vent on the side
92. 3:22of my helmet and we let my oxygen squirt
93. 3:24out into the universe fed by the tank on
94. 3:26my back so that um it would hopefully
95. 3:30dilute and and clear my eyes as quick as
96. 3:33possible and from the time I first
97. 3:36started having problems until I was back
98. 3:37to work was about a half hour uh but by
99. 3:41the end of it my eyes were stinging and
100. 3:43I couldn't see great but I could see
101. 3:45well enough whatever it was had uh had
102. 3:48diluted and evaporated off my eyes I
103. 3:50stopped squirting my oxygen out to the
104. 3:52universe which was a nice valve to close
105. 3:55and then got back to work and if
106. 3:59anything just made the first spacewalk
107. 4:01more interesting you know we got
108. 4:04everything done it the rest of the
109. 4:05spacewalk wasn't easy either this was
110. 4:07just well things aren't going to go
111. 4:09right things are going to go wrong we're
112. 4:11going to have to face up there were lots
113. 4:12of little things you know procedural
114. 4:15mechanical forces uh torqu things that
115. 4:18didn't go exactly as planned either but
116. 4:21by the end of it when we finally Scott
117. 4:24got in I got in closed up the hatch
118. 4:26started to repressurize the airlock it
119. 4:28wasn't like the only thing we were
120. 4:30talking about was the fact that I've
121. 4:31been blind for a while it was wow that
122. 4:33was a huge Endeavor a huge piece to try
123. 4:36and bite off and chew up and we'
124. 4:38succeeded and got everything done and
125. 4:41and uh and we're getting ready then for
126. 4:43our next space walk to go finish
127. 4:44everything up a couple days hence pretty
128. 4:46amazing day in the life one of your
129. 4:48mantras is prepare for failure yeah
130. 4:49which is pretty much the entire Mantra
131. 4:51of NASA and astronauts right that's what
132. 4:53you do more so than anyone has a
133. 4:55comprehension of I think the movie
134. 4:57Apollo 13 did a bit of Justice to that
135. 4:59because I think you got to see you know
136. 5:01the preparation and I think you got to
137. 5:03see some of the teamwork and we can talk
138. 5:04about that a little bit later but you
139. 5:06prepare for failure you put you make
140. 5:08redundancies upon redundancies upon
141. 5:09redundancies you train yourself that's
142. 5:12really what an astronaut's about right
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154. 5:37fascinating interview and I'll see you
155. 5:39there