主持人: It feels like this is just an exciting time to talk about space and, uh, and everyone seems to be doing it. I think maybe we could just kick things off and start right there. From your perspective, what do you think is driving this new wave of excitement and investment in space exploration? What, what feels different to you about this moment?

Chris Hadfield: Uh, access. There are amazing times in history, Whitney, where we collectively as a species invent something new that opens up whole new opportunities for humanity. Uh, think about, you know, when we first harnessed fire or when someone built the first raft to cross, I don't know, the Red Sea. Uh, or when we started, um, domesticating horses and and allowed ourselves to travel quickly. Uh, or when the first train was invented, you know, late 1700s, early 1800s, and then the airplane and the car. All of those things, uh, changed not only how we could move around, but then where we could go to. And spaceflight has been around now for 60 years, but we're in a revolution right now of reusable spaceship design, which is drastically dropping the cost, which then increases the access for everybody. And right now, it's it's possible to just buy a ticket and go to space for the price of a luxury car. And luxury cars are expensive, but there are a lot of people buying luxury cars, too. So it's it's just a a kind of a revolutionary time in starting to leave Earth in amongst all the scientific and explorative stuff going on. And, uh, I I find it all really inspiring and exciting and also kind of delightful based on what I've done my whole life.

主持人: And I mean, and you've lived through many eras of of space exploration from you know, think about like cold war competition to international cooperation and now where we are where we're seeing this sort of surge in private enterprise and and how do you how do you think the the purpose of going to space has evolved through these phases? How have people thought thought about it differently?

Chris Hadfield: When I was born, uh, and I'm by no means the oldest man in the world, no one had gone to space. Like I, when I was just learning to walk, that's when Yuri Gagarin and then a month later Al Shepard and then everybody that followed started going to space. So it's it's still incredibly new in in the human experience. Um, and I I think the evolution, uh, makes complete sense where initially it was just barely possible and we we took an enormous risk to try and just like we often do with a new capability like the first people to Antarctica. A large percentage of them died just trying to prove whether Shackleton managed to keep his whole crew alive barely, but, uh, just trying to push really the envelope of human experience. And that's where we were when I was growing up. And then we evolved from, uh, the Apollo program with Apollo 13 and and all those near misses to the shuttle program which we regularized it a lot, but it's still we had two tragic, uh, completely fatal accidents during shuttle and and but we've gotten better and better at it. We've learned so much from each of those problems in the past. So that now the vehicle that regularly takes people to the space station and back, the SpaceX Dragon vehicle with a with a Dragon capsule on top, it's it's the safest rocket ever. And that didn't happen accidentally. It is a natural progression. And as soon as you make something safe enough and cheap enough, then it stops being just the purview of, uh, of a trillionaire like the Soviet Union or the United States and it gets down to the billionaire and then the millionaire and then I I don't know what you call under that the centinire or something someone who has I don't know $100,000 or $75,000. Um, it's still expensive, but but if you plot it on a curve, you it's easy to extrapolate where it's going. And that naturally then opens up a lot more commercial opportunity for, uh, putting things in space, for satellites to observe the world for commercial purposes, but also just for people not just to risk their lives and explore, but to just see what it's like to go for a ride. And lots of people are doing that now.

主持人: Wow. Uh, and it sounds like you you think that we're probably going to see more of this or it will become even more accessible as as time goes on.

Chris Hadfield: Well, if you'd asked me the same question about airplanes in, uh, 1920, say, uh, after we'd had a big area of, uh, of government development with the first world war and then the very first airlines started being formed. One of the first was KM in Holland and they I mean, it was crazy. There were no regulations. Uh, instrument flying didn't exist yet. Where do you get fuel there? They don't there's not any big infrastructure of runways, but people saw that, hey, this is important. This is going to open up the whole world to us and let's be on the cutting edge of it and let's let's move out. You can't stop people's creativity and imagination and entrepreneurship. And that's the phase we're just really nicely entering into in space flight right now. I I help run a big international technology incubator called the Creative Destruction Lab. I run the space component of that. And so I regularly see hundreds of brilliant young people from all around the world, uh, building businesses, uh, developing ideas so that they can take advantage of of this moment in history to be some of the early, uh, developers of the technologies we're going to need.

主持人: You know, I think another thing a lot of folks when they they're looking at the headlines, not just related to space, but just in general, um, there's, you know, a lot of things happening around, you know, global tensions and geopolit political, um, tensions and space has always in a lot of ways reflected the the politics of the time. And so I I wonder if when you look at at these headlines and and see the things that are are going on out there, what opportunities you might see for collaboration in orbit and potentially what what risks, um, do you think were presented in this moment when we think about the future of space exploration?

Chris Hadfield: Yeah, all new inventions are dual use. You know, we we we don't really think about it much, but everything you ever come up with, any new idea, it can be used peacefully. It can be used antagonistically, you know, metallurgy, uh, with knives and forks or or anything, fire or nuclear energy or gosh, everything. And and we're just people. I got to know, um, Jane Goodall, uh, had multiple things we did together and she just sadly passed away recently, but I was with her back in March and we were talking one of the things she discovered when she went into the jungles quite optimistically about, you know, the innocence and the purity of animals. She discovered that chimpanzees murder each other and they they wage war. Tribes of chimpanzees wage war on each other. They commit genocide.

Chris Hadfield: I mean, and and that's the closest animal in the entire, uh, living things on earth that we're related to. We are very much that a flawed being. But at the same time, we have developed society and and societal rules and cultures that protect us from our worst nature. And we have police forces and and military forces. And so all of that is going to be exported into space. Right now it's been, uh, maybe slightly more pure than it could have been because of the limited access to it. But you need to remember in 1962 both the United States and the Soviet Union detonated nuclear weapons in Earth orbit and had horrific, uh, consequences. Like almost the whole world could see aurora because of the big disruption of the magnetic field and it wiped out a whole bunch of satellites and, uh, some of the ground stations in Hawaii caught fire because of all the tremendous amount of energy coming from the sky. So, you know, we're we're by no means perfect. What we need to do is, uh, look at this new technology just like we have all the ones in the past and figure out how should we regulate it? How do we integrate it so that it actually serves a purpose for the human condition? And I I I focus on a lot of different things, but that is very much one of them. How can I be part of the group of people that is thinking long term, thinking big picture? Uh, I'm the chair of the Open Lunar Foundation looking at lunar settlement policy and and how not to just mirror the problems that exist on Earth right now. But if if we wait for everything to be perfect, we we'll never do anything and we have to somehow do the amazing things while allowing for the, uh, the imperfections of human behavior.

主持人: You will not be surprised to know that we're getting lots of, uh, interesting questions from the audience who are just so fascinated by your work and and the things that you're saying right now. And, you know, I think to sort of piggyback on on what you're saying, um, you know, do you see this, I guess, this sort of blurring line between space exploration and some of the challenges that we're facing here at home, whether that is, you know, geopolitics or or climate change, for instance. We have a a question from, um, from Cat H, who asks how we might think about investing in space as as climate activists. How how how can that be part of the way we look at space travel?

Chris Hadfield: Right. Well, it's it's much like how can you be a climate activist and invest in some other industry. Of course, none of the space industries are based in space. All of the industry and investing happens here on Earth. And so, if you look at a company, for example, like, uh, GHG Sat, uh, GHG stands for greenhouse gas. And what they developed is a really clever little sensor that specifically looks for the gases like methane that contribute most, um, to, uh, changes in the chemistry of our atmosphere and therefore, um, the greenhouse effect that leads to global warming. And GHG Sat is is a very successful company and and they're leading the world. And what they do is they they, uh, orbit the world and constantly 24/7 look for unknown sources of big methane leaks and then inform the person that that owns the pipeline or the plant or whatever. There's a company like Planet, um, that that has hundreds of satellites up that are imaging the world down to very fine resolution every day and they do a lot of what you would have to call altruistic work to try and let everybody see the actual health of our planet and what's going on. And so, uh, it's a big enough industry, multi multi-billion dollar industry, that there's lots of different areas in it that that you can choose to support by, um, by investing in certain companies.

主持人: I'd love to to build on that a little bit. You know, when you think about the technology, um, and you know, what's advancing in in all spaces, but in in in space, uh, you know, we have what reusable rockets now and AI being used to, um, assist spacecraft and you know, even autonomous rovers and and that sort of thing. And and you of course are way more versed in this than than I am, but

Chris Hadfield: I'm a semi-autonomous rover myself.

主持人: Yeah. Well, I mean, I like I guess when you when you think about all this stuff, what what are the innovations that you see that you think are most reshaping our path to eventually being able to spend significant amounts of time off of Earth?

Chris Hadfield: Yeah. One of the first ones you touched on, Whitney, which is reusable rockets. Right now, we have partially reusable rockets. Uh, the first stage that gets you off the launch pad and above the air so that then you can go fast enough. You know, in order to stay in orbit, you have to go 5 miles a second, 8 km a second. You can't do that down here in the air. There's just too much friction. But as soon as you get above the air, then you can go sideways and accelerate out to orbital speed. And so that first stage that does the heavy lifting, gets you off the pad, gets you up, uh, you know, where there's virtually no air, and then it runs out of fuel and spits you off. Now, those first stages, as as most people on this call know, come back and land. So you don't you don't throw away any of the metal and you really are just paying for fuel. And that has radically dropped the cost of access to space. And not only is it SpaceX with their Dragon or their Falcon rocket that a lot of people know about, um, but, uh, Blue Origin is has already launched once, but they're launching again within a few weeks their big lifter that they named after one of the early astronauts. They call it New Glenn. And they're trying to land that first stage out on a barge. And then a New Zealand company, a real strong upandcomer called Rocket Lab, has a new partially reusable rocket called Neutron that they're intending to launch from the east coast to the US before the end of the year. So multiple Western companies competing with first stage reusable rockets and in China they're doing the same thing.

Chris Hadfield: Um, what the real change will be when we have a 100% reusable rocket. So you don't throw away any of your, um, construction and and in sunk cost investment with each flight. You can just bring the pieces back like an airliner, fill them up with fuel and use them again. And then you become really, uh, financially viable. Uh, it it doesn't take an enormous organization just to get to space. And and that's coming quickly with SpaceX's new Starship. It's a monster of a rocket and a very complex thing to do. But if you watch their last flight, their 11th test flight, they had remarkable success. Both pieces safely made it back. They're pushing the edges of the envelope to try and figure out, you know, where they can make all of their, uh, economical savings in in complexity. But it won't be very long before you see a Starship launch either from Texas or Florida. Um, the first stage come back and get grabbed and then the orbital stage get up do what it's doing in space and then come back and get grabbed stack them up fill them up with fuel and use them again that's coming quite rapidly that's going to drop the cost even more and so to me access is everything, uh, as soon as we can make it safe and simple and as inexpensive as possible for things to get to space that's when the earth orbit and earth moon economies will really take off.

主持人: Well, you've you've talked a little bit about some of the the technological things that might need to happen in order to enable us to to be a a space fairing species, um, species, excuse me. Um, I guess when you think about some of the other obstacles that we might face, whether that's political or ethical things, what do you see as some of the the biggest things standing in our way from seeing this as a reality?

Chris Hadfield: Well, civilizations rise and fall. Uh, all the time. Some of them last a long time. The Roman Empire. Uh, if you look at China, they've been an anomaly in human history. Although they've had, you know, all of their es and flows, they've been kind of a discrete geopolitical unit for thousands and thousands of years in that part of the world. Uh, and that adds a sense of urgency to what's going on because you don't have to look very far back in history to whatever the Middle Ages, the dark ages or, you know, Egypt had that zenith of civilization and then and then collapsed or all the ones that came before that. And so, you're just sticking your head in the sand if if you don't think that our current civilization is going to come apart at the seams. And and crumble for a while before something else emerges. So, so there's urgency to what's happening. We're at a moment right now where we're capable of doing magnificent things. You know, uh, it's it's kind of staggering to think of the huge number of things that are happening simultaneously on Earth right now, right at the cutting edge, stuff that was impossible just five years ago. Um, and so a lot of what I do is to be part of the effort to help hold it all together, to keep us from falling to our our bad chimpanzeee natures and to actually, um, make the most of of the civilization that we've been handed.

Chris Hadfield: But I also, one of the things, Whitney, that you really internalize orbiting the world is, um, a sense of time. M in a in a frenetic place in a city you just everything's just going going going and fast and it's hard to even imagine the rest of the world. It sure is hard to imagine a hundred years and it's virtually impossible to imagine a thousand years or 10,000 years. But on the quiet gracefilled almost sanctity of a spaceship you can see where the continents fit together just by looking out the window. And and while I was on board the spaceship, we went from one side of the sun to the other over 6 months. And I got to watch the entire world, um, change from summer to winter as the hemisphere swapped. I got to watch the whole world take a breath in what I realized was one of four and a half billion breaths of how our world refreshes itself. And that that sense of time really soaked into me and it and also the commonality of the human experience because you see the same patterns reflected no matter where we have chosen to live. Uh, they they all are similar whether you're over Connecticut or whether you're over Africa or whether you're over Australia. You can see, hey, it's just people doing the same thing down there. And they all want a little joy and laughter and a good world for their children and their grandchildren.

Chris Hadfield: And so to me, that tempers the kind of panicked urgency of a lot of news reporting and and frantic feeling of desperation that that seeps into common everyday society. It it great makes me an eternal optimist because our species has been here for half a million years and we're still here despite our destructive nature and despite the rises and falls. And I just see it as a necessity as the current crop of adults to not squander that and and to try and do our best to recognize our history and make the most of our present so we can hand our kids a decent future.

主持人: It's an extraordinary, uh, perspective on on life from being able to see it from that v vantage point and it seems like something that I imagine a lot of people could take and help them sort of navigate their day-to-day and ground them, uh, in what really matters. Um, well, you know, I I mean, I think that, uh, speaking into this this point of like thinking about global division, which we talked about a little earlier, um, and how in a lot of ways space exploration has served as somewhat of like a human, uh, project that transcends, you know, borders, uh, transcends any any sort of thing that might divide us. Um, do you think that there's an opportunity for it to still bring people together, um, in that same way in in this moment as it as in the past?

Chris Hadfield: Yeah, and in fact, perhaps it's more important than ever. Uh, if you look at world history since the early 1990s, uh, we've had a strange 30-year bubble of peace with the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the, you know, Iron Curtain and the wall in Berlin and all that. It's not our normal behavior. Uh, our much more normal historical behavior is one of conflict and and fear and jealousness over possessions and and such that that often flame, uh, the the the worst of of human behaviors. Uh, but even since the early 90s, we've had lots of of bad things happen. The Gulf War and and of course the the huge human conflict and loss of life that's going on at the other end of the Mediterranean and and in Ukraine right now. Um, and when there is conflict and that sense of nationalism and the decrease of optimistic internationalism that that began in the early '90s, um, I think when that happens, you want more, uh, good examples, things that people can look up to.

Chris Hadfield: And, uh, while all that stuff has been going on, 15 leading nations of the world have found a reason to cooperate peacefully. 24 hours, seven days a week for that entire period on the International Space Station. And even right now with the with the all of the posturing and and saber rattling that's going on, um, the United States and Russia and all the other partners of the International Space Station are working together every single day doing scientific research, trying to understand the universe itself, observing our world, and also sharing command of the International Space Station. Americans launch on the Russian Soyos rocket like I did. Uh, Russians launch on the American, uh, Dragon and Falcon rocket and, uh, that cooperation is so visible that anyone in the world can walk out at dawn or dusk and you just have to go to the NASA site and see when it's going over your house, but you can go out and watch. It's the third brightest thing in the sky after the sun and the moon. Next brightest thing is the International Space Station. And you can just watch it go over your head from horizon to horizon. An unmistakable little beacon of of how we behave when we do things right. And and we need examples like that because we're always going to be messing the other stuff up.

主持人: There's so many questions, uh, from the the members about, um, just how how you think about the world, um, and humanity after spending some some time out there. Um, and Johanna Z, um, is curious, you know, from your perspective when you think about life and sort of meaning and purpose and you you touched on this a few minutes ago, but, um, you know, what do you see as the the meaning of life is is the question.

Chris Hadfield: Yeah, it's big question. It's a very personal question because life means different things to different people. And I think it also means, you know, I have a seven-month-old granddaughter. Her answer to the meaning of life would be different than my 10-year-old granddaughter or my 40-year-old daughter or or my wife and I. At different stages of your life, there are different goals and purposes.

Chris Hadfield: I think my generic answer though is, um, have dreams, have things that are important to you. They don't have to matter to anybody else, but maybe a little internal thought experiment. If my life goes perfectly from here forward, um, what will happen? Like, and if you don't have an answer to that question, then the odds of your dreams coming true are greatly diminished. But if you've gone through the little self-thought experiment, what is it that I actually dream of? I remember when I was 10, but now I'm a busy adult and I don't dream of anything anymore. I think that's a self-destructive way to live. What is it that you're dreaming of? And I don't mean the transient uncontrollable stuff like, you know, win the lottery or whatever. I mean things that you can actually shape, uh, through your through your own choices. And then once you've decided these are the actual things that are important to me in life that that I really want to have in my life that, um, that make me feel joyful and fulfilled and and proud. Um, and then once you have that list then what are you doing this afternoon or or this evening or this weekend in order to change who you are so that you are moving yourself and your life very slightly towards those dreams and how how are you doing that with all the little decisions that you make? Because that's the only thing you control is your little decisions. What what am I going to do next? That's the only thing you actually control. What am I going to do next? Everything else, you can't change what you did. The future's just a menu to choose from. What am I going to do next? But if you don't have those personal overarching definitions of perfection, then I I don't know how you choose what you're going to do next. Are you just stimulating your nerve endings? That's going to be maybe okay briefly, but it's going to be fundamentally disappointing.

Chris Hadfield: And and maybe the final piece of that, Whitney, is don't allow, and this is Chris's philosophy on on life well-lived, but don't allow those big dreams of your life to define success or failure. Um, try and and lower your margin of victory, your your bar of victory so that you can get over it multiple times a day because nobody else really cares or understands what you're doing. They may try, but but that's really up to you. And so don't say, "Well, six years from now, I'm going to enjoy myself." Instead, try and find all the little joyful and and beautiful and personal things that are happening in and amongst your daily work that that you can take pride in, that you can smile at, that you can revel in a little bit, that you can quietly celebrate to yourself as you're you're hering this big intractable herd of sheep that is your life towards some some upper pasture that you're dreaming about. So, yeah, have those goals. Make strong daily, hourly, momentby-moment decisions to move yourself that way and celebrate yourself as as often as you can. To me, that is a life well-lived.

主持人: I love that. Well, I'd love to to move to some of your writing. Um, and you know, your your work as a writer takes readers to space, but this time sort of through historical fiction. And I imagine that fiction presents this opportunity for you to spark curiosity and and wonder about the universe in the similar way that you've also been able to do that through space flight. So what what inspired you to to start writing stories about space exploration?

Chris Hadfield: Well, I I've always loved reading. Uh, I I love being able to probe deeply into the thoughts of a person that I've never met. You know, it's like a form of, uh, shared telepathy. Someone has taken the time to as as eloquently as they can to lay their thoughts and emotions down into, you know, script so that then I can pick them up whenever's convenient for me and try and tap into that other human being. And I love the the power and the insight that I get from reading. I also love to be entertained. I like reading not just like I'm reading Justinians flee now which is a fascinating history of the end of the Roman Empire and the one of the big plagues that came through Europe, uh, which is factual but I'm really looking forward to the new Reacher you know Lee Child book because they're they're so much fun to read, um, I love being totally engrossed in in, uh, a thought like that or someone else's book and so when I set out to write I initially wrote three non-fiction books and they they've all done great. They're all, you know, bestsellers. But, um, I thought it would be a really fun challenge to try and share the wild difference of spaceflight experience and the life of an astronaut because it's still one of the very rarest of all professions.

Chris Hadfield: How to share those ideas as richly and wholesomely and and in engagingly as I I can. You know, I'm a musician. I've written and performed songs about it. I've done a BBC series, a National Geographic series, I did a master class, I teach at university, I've done all those things. But writing fiction, suddenly you can get into just everybody's spontaneous gut reaction and and you can look at the same event from multiple different characters within your story. So, so then you can really bring it to life for the reader. And I took it as a big challenge just like learning to be a an F-18 pilot or or or learning to command a spaceship. What is the goal? Um, how do you learn from the experts of how to do this thing? And then how do you develop your own skill set so that maybe you can do it to the limit of your own ability? And and I'm really proud to say my newest book, Final Orbit, which is the third in my thriller fiction series, it's the number one, uh, national bestseller right now. Number one of all the books. It's like that's sounds crazy, but that that's the truth. So, so it's great that other people are looking forward to the adventure and to the ideas as much as I look forward to writing them.

主持人: Well, there's a lot of interest, uh, in the comments around your your writing. And we have a question from Fans A who says, "If you rewrote An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth today, is there anything you would change? Any new stories you would add?"

Chris Hadfield: I think the next book I'm going to write will be a young adult version based on the on the purposes of An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. I mean, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth is how to lead a better life. I pretended it was a biography. Um, but but if you read it, uh, then you'll realize it it is exactly what the title says, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. And and it's been used by so many surprise. It's been in almost 30 languages. Sam Houston State used it to formulate the the fundamental curriculum for first year students compulsory reading and, um, some of the southern ministers made it the the central theme of a whole series of lectures that they gave. But, um, I'm trying to take the purposes of An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth and make it accessible to people who are at a really pivotal stage of life, which is around 10 or or 12 maybe, where you're becoming aware of the world, but you still hardly know anything beyond the the little community that you've grown up in. And what are some of the big ideas, but I'm I'm just in the writing process right now of deciding what is the most effective way to do that? Do I write it in the in the the style that I did, Astronaut's Guide, or do I make it like an illustrated young person's version of that? Or do I challenge myself with the task of trying to write it as an adventure or as you know, u France by Santander or or whatever an engrossing story that appeals to a human being at that age of development but that also has, uh, within it all of the ideas that might help them make better choices in their life.

Chris Hadfield: Just a quick aside, I have a 10-year-old granddaughter. She lives in China, but, uh, every day with a 12-h hour time difference, we read Ann of Green Gables together because at 10 years old, that's such a beautiful book of ideas and behaviors and, um, and so I make time, uh, when she's just getting up for school, she gets up early to read with her grandpa or if my schedule's busy, she'll do it after she's done her homework at night. Um, but how to write useful ideas, uh, in the language of a young adolescent and and so to answer the question specifically, yeah, I'm rethinking the ideas that are in An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth to try and frame them as clearly and and as usefully as I can for the people that I hope will read it.

主持人: When you look at what's happening right now with space exploration, what what makes you feel really hopeful? Um, and what what gives you pause?

Chris Hadfield: Uh, both. I mean, uh, everything makes me feel hopeful and gives me pause and that's how life goes, right? Um, and it's it's hard to keep things together at a personal level, at a family level, at a business level, and at a species level. Uh,

Chris Hadfield: What gives me great optimism is the incredible, um, relentless unstoppable, uh, human ability to, uh, imagine and create new things. You know, we are almost the only species if not the only one that can imagine things that don't exist yet. And and we we that's our big lever that that's what has given us the great advantage in the animal kingdom, right? I is we can picture things that haven't happened yet and take action and build things and do things anticipating something that's coming and and not just reacting to how we feel right now and, uh, you know, leading this big international technology incubator or looking at some of the create creativity that's going on around the world. Uh, and when you said 8.3 billion people loose with the activity of their minds, it's it it's just wild the stuff we can come up with. Um, and and so that gives me great optimism.

Chris Hadfield: The history of our species gives me great optimism as well. Despite the daily ability to snuff ourselves out, to to stop all civilization, to do ourselves irreparable harm, we are still here after many hundreds of thousands of years. Despite our destructive nature, we find a way to muddle through and and keep and keep it going. And we have rises and falls, but we're we're still here. And and, um, so when people say, "Oh, we're ruining the world." And it's never been as hard to be an adult as it a human as it is right now and all of that. It's hard, but it's always been hard. You're you're just demonstrating your ignorance of history when you say stuff like that. Uh, I don't think your great-grandparents would have said they weren't worried about existentialism. Uh, you know, the first world war, second world war, the the gosh nuclear weapons being invented, the McCarthyism, Vietnam war, that's just the last hundred years. So, um, so I'm quite excited about our ability to invent and create and and do things that that overall end up being better for the human condition. And we're big enough now, uh, in population that that we're slowly gaining a better awareness of, uh, of that impact globally and what we're going to do about that. Uh, you know, if there were only a thousand of us, we wouldn't have to worry, but there's enough of us now that we just need to consider that in how we generate energy and what we do with our garbage and stuff like that, but we're also discovering just so much cool stuff right now we're discovering, uh, all of the small particles, the subatomic particles, things smaller than an atom and we who knows we may soon discover how to harness gravity.

Chris Hadfield: I mean, like we learned how to harness electricity how move electrons around. Um, we have a probe going to one of the moons of Jupiter now that is has more water. That moon of Jupiter has more water than Earth and it has a heat source at the middle because of gravitational poles. Maybe there's life there. Um, we're drilling on Mars looking for fossils. We have our James Webb and other telescopes actually analyzing the atmosphere of planets orbiting other stars to try and find out if we're alone in the universe or not. And and yeah, there's all the troubles that we go through but at the same time there's daily magnificence and, uh, I I know which part I'm more interested in.

主持人: So we have, you know, a couple of questions as we're wrapping up here, uh, one that I want to ask you that's come from two different people. Um, so Richard S puts forward, you know, if we as a species can't take better care of what's right in front of us on the planet, why should we be entrusted to manage a less inviting environment? Um, and then which feels like a part two to this, Karina M says, "How can we cultivate the same level of focus and teamwork here on Earth that astronauts need to survive in space?" And I wonder if there's some, uh, wisdom that you can bring that, uh, to help us move.

Chris Hadfield: Any wisdom I had got tapped out long ago, but I'll do my best for Richard and Karina. Um, if we wait until things are perfect, then we will never get anything done. And and if we say, "Well, I I've got to get my house 100% in order before I ever do anything else." Well, then you'll never do anything else because your house will never be 100% in in order. We have to recognize that imperfection is the norm. Um, and we need to be working on the big problems, the the ones that are most, um, life-threatening or or or the ones that are important for quality of life or continuence of existence or whatever. We got to work on those. But if we wait until we get those completely nailed down and perfect, uh, then we will wither and die as a species because we have to be doing the other things as well.

Chris Hadfield: Watching my grandchildren is fascinating. What I've realized is, uh, evolution gave us the ability to walk way before it gave us the ability to talk and communicate. The necessity to go explore to to touch things to to experience things to lick everything to just find out about it. That that is so important for human in development and human nature that that's how we evolved. And it's only later that someone can explain to you what's happening. And that's going to continue and manifesting itself through all of life and the necessity to go over the next hill and to explore and to try and understand. And the reason I'm the chair of the board of the Open Lunar Foundation is, hey, we we're we're sending people to the moon in February, and that's the precursor to setting up the first permanent settlements on the moon. How are we going to do it? Let's not just transplant our current stupid geopolitical mess and just stick it on the moon. Maybe this is a turning of a page where we can do better. And I'm not going to say we can't go to the moon until we get Earth perfect. What I'm doing instead is saying we're inevitably because of human nature going to be setting up settlement on the moon. So, let's use every influence possible and every lesson that I can have learned possible to try and do it as well as we can at this particular time in history. And to me, that's that's, um, the most important stuff I'm doing in my life, influencing other minds, pushing the edges of technology, and, uh, and trying to give us the greatest chance of doing the right thing, uh, in the days to come.

主持人: Well, Chris, you've given us, uh, so much to think about here about your own experiences, a new lens through which to look at our planet and, uh, and the universe, honestly. And so, this has been wonderful. I know that I speak for all the members and saying that this has been such a an enlightening conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Chris Hadfield: Whitney, thank you for taking the time and being so deaf and skilled at juggling all the questions and and, uh, and and proddding me to continue to talk. So long. It's been been a joy talking to you. Um, and and I hope everybody, uh, enjoys the ideas, maybe the books, um, all the various things. You you get one life. Uh, I lost both my parents in the last four months and that what I took away was they lived good long lives. Um, and you need to live and love every day. Uh, it's amazing what can happen.

主持人: I love that. Thank you. Thank you, Chris.

Chris Hadfield: Thank you.