It is an exclusive club inside an exclusive
club - the space walkers. Those privileged explorers who have
seen the earth in a single glance. Canada's own Chris Hadfield
will soon become a member of this elite club, at the same
time becoming the first Canadian to walk in space. With help
from family, friends and colleagues, Chris Hadfield: Cornfield
to Cosmos takes a behind-the-scenes look at Hadfield's lifelong
journey and passion to work and travel in space.
Raised on a corn farm in Milton, Ontario, Hadfield inherited
a love for aviation from his father, who flew an old J3 Cub.
And at age 10, Hadfield watched as Apollo 11 simultaneously
left its imprint on the moon and on him. That fateful mission
planted the seed that would launch the direction of his whole
life. At that point in history, no Canadian had even come
close to space flight, so Hadfield had to carve out his own
path to becoming an astronaut.
In his teens, Hadfield joined the air cadets and learned
to fly gliders. At 16, he already had a pilot's licence. By
the mid-1970s, NASA was pulling back from space exploration.
His dreams of working in space seemed to be slipping away.
But Hadfield decided no matter what the odds he wouldn't give
up. He entered the Canadian military where he flew CF18s.
And while on Cold War watch he successfully escorted Soviet
bombers out of Canadian air space. His exploits earned him
a spot in the U.S. Navy's famous Top Gun test pilot school
where he earned "Test Pilot of the Year" - an award never
given to a foreign pilot. It was clear Hadfield had the right
stuff. And when the Canadian Space Agency went looking
for astronauts, Hadfield was selected from 5, 350 applicants.
After successfully completing astronaut boot camp, his first
ride in the shuttle was on November 12, 1995.
Today, Hadfield is getting ready for a second mission working
in space. This time, his job will be to unpack the new Canadian
robotic arm from the shuttle and bolt it together onto the
International Space Station. In typical down-to-earth style,
Hadfield muses, "It's not that significantly different
from going outside on a horrible day in wintertime where you
have to go fix some piece of machinery that's broken on the
farm, where you have a limited number of tools and the weather
is unfavourable and the machine's not behaving properly and
you have to figure out a way to make it work."
Original Air Date - March 6, 2001
Links
Canadian
Space Agency
International
Space Station
Chris
Hadfield's Bio from NASA
CBC
News: April 9, 2001 - Hadfield ready for his historic space
walk
CBC
News: April 19, 2001 - Hadfield prepares for space
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