YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → What I learned from going blind in space | Chris Hadfield | TED

What I learned from going blind in space | Chris Hadfield | TED — Transcript

by TED · 2,890 words · 422 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:12What's the scariest thing you've ever done?
0:17Or another way to say it is,
0:20what's the most dangerous thing that you've ever done?
0:24And why did you do it?
0:28I know what the most dangerous thing is
0:29that I've ever done
0:31because NASA does the math.
0:33You look back to the first five shuttle launches,
0:35the odds of a catastrophic event
0:38during the first five shuttle launches
0:39was one in nine.
0:42And even when I first flew in the shuttle
0:44back in 1995, 74 shuttle flight,
0:47the odds were still now that we look back
0:49about one in 38 or so -- one in 35, one in 40.
0:55Not great odds, so it's a really interesting day
0:57when you wake up at the Kennedy Space Center
0:59and you're going to go to space that day
1:02because you realize by the end of the day
1:04you're either going to be floating effortlessly, gloriously in space,
1:07or you'll be dead.
1:10You go into, at the Kennedy Space Center,
1:14the suit-up room,
1:16the same room that our childhood heroes
1:20got dressed in,
1:21that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin got suited in
1:24to go ride the Apollo rocket to the moon.
1:26And I got my pressure suit built around me
1:30and rode down outside in the van
1:34heading out to the launchpad --
1:35in the Astro van -- heading out to the launchpad,
1:38and as you come around the corner
1:40at the Kennedy Space Center,
1:42it's normally predawn, and in the distance,
1:46lit up by the huge xenon lights,
1:49is your spaceship --
1:52the vehicle that is going to take you off the planet.
1:56The crew is sitting in the Astro van
1:58sort of hushed, almost holding hands,
2:01looking at that as it gets bigger and bigger.
2:03We ride the elevator up
2:06and we crawl in, on your hands and knees
2:08into the spaceship, one at a time,
2:10and you worm your way up
2:11into your chair and plunk yourself down
2:14on your back.
2:16And the hatch is closed,
2:20and suddenly,
2:22what has been a lifetime of both dreams and denial
2:27is becoming real,
2:28something that I dreamed about,
2:29in fact, that I chose to do when I was nine years old,
2:32is now suddenly within not too many minutes
2:35of actually happening.
2:37In the astronaut business --
2:40the shuttle is a very complicated vehicle;
2:42it's the most complicated flying machine ever built.
2:45And in the astronaut business, we have a saying, which is,
2:49there is no problem so bad
2:51that you can't make it worse.
2:53(Laughter)
2:54And so you're very conscious in the cockpit;
2:57you're thinking about all of the things
2:59that you might have to do,
3:00all the switches and all the wickets you have to go through.
3:02And as the time gets closer and closer,
3:05this excitement is building.
3:06And then about three and a half minutes before launch,
3:08the huge nozzles on the back,
3:10like the size of big church bells,
3:12swing back and forth
3:13and the mass of them is such
3:14that it sways the whole vehicle,
3:16like the vehicle is alive underneath you,
3:19like an elephant getting up off its knees or something.
3:23And then about 30 seconds before launch,
3:25the vehicle is completely alive --
3:27it is ready to go --
3:28the APUs are running,
3:29the computers are all self-contained,
3:31it's ready to leave the planet.
3:32And 15 seconds before launch, this happens:
3:36(Video) Voice: 12, 11, 10,
3:40nine, eight, seven, six --
3:44(Space shuttle preparing for takeoff)
3:47-- start, two, one,
3:50booster ignition, and liftoff of the space shuttle Discovery,
3:54returning to the space station, paving the way ...
3:58(Space shuttle taking off)
4:10Chris Hadfield: It is incredibly powerful
4:13to be on board one of these things.
4:14You are in the grip of something
4:17that is vastly more powerful than yourself.
4:19It's shaking you so hard you can't focus
4:21on the instruments in front of you.
4:23It's like you're in the jaws of some enormous dog
4:26and there's a foot in the small of your back
4:28pushing you into space,
4:30accelerating wildly straight up,
4:32shouldering your way through the air,
4:34and you're in a very complex place --
4:36paying attention, watching the vehicle
4:38go through each one of its wickets
4:40with a steadily increasing smile on your face.
4:42After two minutes, those solid rockets explode off
4:45and then you just have the liquid engines,
4:48the hydrogen and oxygen,
4:49and it's as if you're in a dragster
4:51with your foot to the floor
4:52and accelerating like you've never accelerated.
4:55You get lighter and lighter,
4:56the force gets on us heavier and heavier.
4:59It feels like
5:00someone's pouring cement on you or something.
5:02Until finally,
5:03after about eight minutes and 40 seconds or so,
5:06we are finally at exactly the right altitude,
5:08exactly the right speed,
5:10the right direction, the engine shut off,
5:13and we're weightless.
5:16And we're alive.
5:18It's an amazing experience.
5:20But why would we take that risk?
5:23Why would you do something that dangerous?
5:27In my case the answer is fairly straightforward.
5:29I was inspired as a youngster
5:32that this was what I wanted to do.
5:34I watched the first people walk on the moon
5:36and to me, it was just an obvious thing --
5:38I want to somehow turn myself into that.
5:41But the real question is,
5:42how do you deal with the danger of it
5:45and the fear that comes from it?
5:47How do you deal with fear versus danger?
5:51And having the goal in mind, thinking about where it might lead,
5:54directed me to a life of
5:56looking at all of the small details to allow
5:59this to become possible,
6:01to be able to launch and go help build a space station
6:04where you are on board a million-pound creation
6:06that's going around the world at five miles a second,
6:09eight kilometers a second,
6:10around the world 16 times a day,
6:13with experiments on board that are teaching us
6:17what the substance of the universe is made of
6:19and running 200 experiments inside.
6:21But maybe even more importantly,
6:23allowing us to see the world in a way
6:27that is impossible through any other means,
6:30to be able to look down
6:31and have -- if your jaw could drop, it would --
6:34the jaw-dropping gorgeousness of the turning orb
6:38like a self-propelled art gallery of fantastic,
6:43constantly changing beauty that is the world itself.
6:47And you see, because of the speed,
6:48a sunrise or a sunset every 45 minutes
6:52for half a year.
6:55And the most magnificent part of all that
6:58is to go outside on a spacewalk.
7:01You are in a one-person spaceship
7:06that is your spacesuit,
7:08and you're going through space with the world.
7:11It's an entirely different perspective,
7:13you're not looking up at the universe,
7:15you and the Earth are going through the universe together.
7:18And you're holding on with one hand,
7:20looking at the world turn beside you.
7:22It's roaring silently
7:26with color and texture as it pours by
7:28mesmerizingly next to you.
7:30And if you can tear your eyes away from that
7:33and you look under your arm
7:35down at the rest of everything,
7:37it's unfathomable blackness,
7:42with a texture you feel like you could stick your hand into.
7:45and you are holding on with one hand,
7:48one link to the other seven billion people.
7:50And I was outside on my first spacewalk
7:52when my left eye went blind,
7:56and I didn't know why.
7:58Suddenly my left eye slammed shut
7:59in great pain
8:00and I couldn't figure out why my eye wasn't working.
8:05I was thinking, what do I do next?
8:06I thought, well maybe that's why we have two eyes,
8:08so I kept working.
8:09But unfortunately, without gravity,
8:13tears don't fall.
8:15So you just get a bigger and bigger ball of whatever that is
8:18mixed with your tears on your eye
8:20until eventually, the ball becomes so big
8:22that the surface tension takes it across the bridge of your nose
8:25like a tiny little waterfall
8:26and goes "goosh" into your other eye,
8:29and now I was completely blind
8:32outside the spaceship.
8:35So what's the scariest thing you've ever done?
8:38(Laughter)
8:41Maybe it's spiders.
8:43A lot of people are afraid of spiders.
8:44I think you should be afraid of spiders --
8:46spiders are creepy and they've got long, hairy legs,
8:49and spiders like this one, the brown recluse --
8:52it's horrible. If a brown recluse bites you,
8:54you end with one of these horrible, big necrotic things
8:56on your leg
8:57and there might be one right now
8:58sitting on the chair behind you, in fact.
9:02And how do you know?
9:03And so a spider lands on you,
9:04and you go through this great, spasmy attack
9:06because spiders are scary.
9:08But then you could say, well is there a brown recluse
9:10sitting on the chair beside me or not?
9:12I don't know. Are there brown recluses here?
9:14So if you actually do the research, you find out that
9:16in the world there are about 50,000 different types of spiders,
9:19and there are about two dozen that are venomous
9:22out of 50,000.
9:23And if you're in Canada, because of the cold winters
9:26here in B.C., there's about 720, 730 different types of spiders
9:30and there's one -- one --
9:32that is venomous,
9:33and its venom isn't even fatal,
9:35it's just kind of like a nasty sting.
9:37And that spider -- not only that,
9:39but that spider has beautiful markings on it,
9:42it's like "I'm dangerous. I got a big radiation symbol on my back, it's the black widow."
9:46So, if you're even slightly careful
9:48you can avoid running into the one spider --
9:51and it lives close the ground,
9:53you're walking along, you are never going to go through
9:55a spider web where a black widow bites you.
9:57Spider webs like this, it doesn't build those,
9:59it builds them down in the corners.
10:01And its a black widow because
10:02the female spider eats the male;
10:04it doesn't care about you.
10:05So in fact,
10:07the next time you walk into a spiderweb,
10:09you don't need to panic and go with your caveman reaction.
10:13The danger is entirely different than the fear.
10:18How do you get around it, though?
10:20How do you change your behavior?
10:21Well, next time you see a spiderweb,
10:23have a good look, make sure it's not a black widow spider,
10:25and then walk into it.
10:27And then you see another spiderweb
10:28and walk into that one.
10:30It's just a little bit of fluffy stuff. It's not a big deal.
10:32And the spider that may come out is no more threat to you than a lady bug
10:35or a butterfly.
10:38And then I guarantee you if you walk through 100 spiderwebs
10:41you will have changed
10:43your fundamental human behavior,
10:45your caveman reaction,
10:47and you will now be able to walk in the park in the morning
10:50and not worry about that spiderweb --
10:51or into your grandma's attic or whatever,
10:54into your own basement.
10:59And you can apply this to anything.
11:02If you're outside on a spacewalk and you're blinded,
11:05your natural reaction would be to panic, I think.
11:08It would make you nervous and worried.
11:10But we had considered all the venom,
11:12and we had practiced with a whole variety of different spiderwebs.
11:15We knew everything there is to know
11:17about the spacesuit
11:18and we trained underwater thousands of times.
11:21And we don't just practice things going right,
11:23we practice things going wrong all the time,
11:26so that you are constantly walking through those spiderwebs.
11:29And not just underwater, but also in virtual reality labs
11:32with the helmet and the gloves
11:33so you feel like it's realistic.
11:35So when you finally actually get outside on a spacewalk,
11:38it feels much different than it would
11:40if you just went out first time.
11:42And even if you're blinded,
11:44your natural, panicky reaction doesn't happen.
11:47Instead you kind of look around and go,
11:49"Okay, I can't see,
11:50but I can hear, I can talk,
11:53Scott Parazynski is out here with me.
11:54He could come over and help me."
11:56We actually practiced incapacitated crew rescue,
12:00so he could float me like a blimp
12:02and stuff me into the airlock if he had to.
12:04I could find my own way back.
12:06It's not nearly as big a deal.
12:07And actually, if you keep on crying for a while,
12:09whatever that gunk was that's in your eye starts to dilute
12:12and you can start to see again,
12:13and Houston, if you negotiate with them,
12:15they will let you then keep working.
12:18We finished everything on the spacewalk
12:20and when we came back inside,
12:22Jeff got some cotton batting and took the crusty stuff around my eyes,
12:26and it turned out it was just the anti-fog,
12:28sort of a mixture of oil and soap, that got in my eye.
12:32And now we use Johnson's No More Tears,
12:35which we probably should've been using
12:36right from the very beginning. (Laughter)
12:40But the key to that is
12:45by looking at the difference
12:47between perceived danger and actual danger,
12:49where is the real risk?
12:50What is the real thing that you should be afraid of?
12:52Not just a generic fear of bad things happening.
12:55You can fundamentally change your reaction to things
12:57so that it allows you to go places
13:00and see things and do things
13:02that otherwise would be completely denied to you ...
13:04where you could see the hardpan south of the Sahara,
13:08or you can see New York City
13:09in a way that is almost dreamlike,
13:12or the unconscious gingham of Eastern Europe fields
13:16or the Great Lakes
13:18as a collection of small puddles.
13:21You can see the fault lines of San Francisco
13:24and the way the water pours out under the bridge,
13:26just entirely different
13:28than any other way that you could have
13:30if you had not found a way to conquer your fear.
13:33You see a beauty that otherwise
13:35never would have happened.
13:39It's time to come home at the end.
13:41This is our spaceship,
13:42the Soyuz, that little one.
13:43Three of us climb in,
13:45and then this spaceship detaches from the station
13:47and falls into the atmosphere.
13:49These two parts here
13:51actually melt, we jettison them and they burn up
13:53in the atmosphere.
13:54The only part that survives is the little bullet
13:56that we're riding in,
13:57and it falls into the atmosphere,
13:59and in essence
14:01you are riding a meteorite home,
14:04and riding meteorites is scary,
14:07and it ought to be.
14:09But instead of riding into the atmosphere
14:11just screaming, like you would
14:12if suddenly you found yourself riding a meteorite
14:15back to Earth -- (Laughter) --
14:18instead, 20 years previously
14:20we had started studying Russian,
14:23and then once you learn Russian, then we
14:25learned orbital mechanics in Russian,
14:28and then we learned vehicle control theory,
14:31and then we got into the simulator
14:32and practiced over and over and over again.
14:35And in fact, you can fly this meteorite
14:37and steer it and land in about a 15-kilometer circle
14:39anywhere on the Earth.
14:40So in fact, when our crew was coming back
14:43into the atmosphere inside the Soyuz,
14:46we weren't screaming, we were laughing;
14:48it was fun.
14:49And when the great big parachute opened,
14:51we knew that if it didn't open
14:53there's a second parachute,
14:54and it runs on a nice little clockwork mechanism.
14:56So we came back, we came thundering back
14:58to Earth and this is what it looked like
15:00to land in a Soyuz, in Kazakhstan.
15:03(Video) Reporter: And you can see one of those
15:05search and recovery helicopters, once again
15:08that helicopter part of dozen such Russian
15:11Mi-8 helicopters.
15:15Touchdown -- 3:14 and 48 seconds,
15:19a.m. Central Time.
15:21CH: And you roll to a stop
15:22as if someone threw your spaceship at the ground
15:23and it tumbles end over end,
15:25but you're ready for it
15:26you're in a custom-built seat,
15:27you know how the shock absorber works.
15:29And then eventually the Russians reach in,
15:31drag you out,
15:32plunk you into a chair,
15:33and you can now look back at
15:37what was an incredible experience.
15:40You have taken the dreams of that
15:42nine-year-old boy,
15:44which were impossible
15:45and dauntingly scary,
15:48dauntingly terrifying,
15:50and put them into practice,
15:53and figured out a way to reprogram yourself,
15:56to change your primal fear
15:58so that it allowed you to come back
16:01with a set of experiences and a level of inspiration
16:05for other people
16:06that never could have been possible otherwise.
16:11Just to finish, they asked me to play that guitar.
16:17I know this song,
16:19and it's really a tribute to the genius
16:24of David Bowie himself,
16:26but it's also, I think,
16:28a reflection of the fact that we are not machines
16:31exploring the universe,
16:32we are people,
16:33and we're taking
16:35that ability to adapt
16:38and that ability to understand
16:39and the ability to take
16:41our own self-perception into a new place.
16:46(Music)
16:52♫ This is Major Tom to ground control ♫
16:56♫ I've left forevermore ♫
17:01♫ And I'm floating in a most peculiar way ♫
17:08♫ And the stars look very different today ♫
17:15♫ For here am I floating in the tin can ♫
17:23♫ A last glimpse of the world ♫
17:30♫ Planet Earth is blue and there's so much left to do ♫
17:37(Music)
17:56Fear not.
17:58(Applause)
18:11That's very nice of you. Thank you very much.
18:14Thank you.

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of What I learned from going blind in space | Chris Hadfield | TED by TED, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 2,890 words across 422 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.