An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth Page 2

  Canada doesn’t have its own test pilot school, but usually sends two pilots a year to study in France, the U.K. or the U.S. In 1987, I won the lottery: I was selected to go to the French school, which is on the Mediterranean. We rented the perfect house there, which came complete with a car. We packed our things, we had goodbye parties. And then, two weeks before we were to wrangle our three kids onto the plane—Kristin was about 9 months old—there was some sort of high-level dispute between the Canadian and French governments. France gave my slot away to a pilot from another country. To say it was a big disappointment personally and a major setback professionally is to understate the case. We were beside ourselves. We’d hit a dead end.

  As I have discovered again and again, things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem at the time. In retrospect, the heartbreaking disaster may be revealed as a lucky twist of fate, and so it was with losing the French slot in the spring. A few months later, I was selected to go to the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School (TPS) at Edwards Air Force Base, and our year there changed everything. It started out perfectly: we headed to sunny Southern California in December, just as winter gripped Bagotville. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go into base housing until the moving van arrived with our furniture. Fortunately, that took several weeks, and in the meantime, we got to spend Christmas at a hotel in Disneyland.

  The next year, 1988, was one of the busiest and best of my life. Test pilot school was like getting a Ph.D. in flying; in a single year we flew 32 different types of planes and were tested every day. It was incredibly tough—and incredibly fun: everyone in the class lived on the same street, and we were all in our late 20s or early 30s and liked to have a good time. The program suited me better than anything I’d done to that point, because of its focus on the analytical aspects of flying, the math, the science—and the camaraderie. It was the first time, really, that I’d been part of a group of people who were so much like me. Most of us wanted to be astronauts, and we didn’t need to keep our desire a secret anymore. TPS is a direct pipeline to NASA; two of my classmates, my good friends Susan Helms and Rick Husband, made it and became astronauts.

  It wasn’t at all clear, though, if test pilot school would be a route to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). When, or even whether, the CSA would select more astronauts was anyone’s guess. Only one thing was certain: the first Canadian astronauts were all payload specialists—scientists, not pilots. By that point, though, I’d already committed to trying to follow the typical American path to becoming an astronaut. Maybe I’d wind up with the wrong stuff for the only space agency where I had the right passport, but it was too late to change tack. On the plus side, however, even if I never became an astronaut, I knew I’d feel I was doing something worthwhile with my life if I spent the rest of it as a test pilot.

  Our class toured the Johnson Space Center in Houston and visited other flight test centers, like the one in Cold Lake, Alberta, and the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, where I ran into a Canadian test pilot who was there as part of a regular exchange program. This guy casually mentioned that his tour was going to end soon and he’d be heading back to Cold Lake, so he guessed someone would be sent to replace him but he wasn’t sure who, yet. When I told Helene about this later, she gave me an are-you-thinking-what-I’m-thinking look.

  I was. Pax is one of the few major test centers in the world. They have the resources to do cutting-edge work such as testing new types of engines and new configurations for military aircraft, not just for the U.S. but for many other countries, from Australia to Kuwait. Not surprisingly, given the relative size of the Canadian military, Cold Lake tests many fewer planes and focuses on modifications, not on expanding the planes’ fundamental capabilities. We had loved living in Cold Lake while I was training to fly fighters, but we’d be spending many years there after I finished test pilot school—why not try to get a stint at Pax first? And yes, there was something else, too: we had become accustomed to warm winters. So I called my career manager (a military officer whose job it is to figure out which billets need to be filled and who could best fill them) and said, “Hey, it would save the Forces about $50,000 if, rather than move us all the way back up to Cold Lake and some other family down to Pax River, you just moved us straight out to Maryland.” He was unequivocal: “No way. You’re coming back.” Oh well, it had been worth a try. But the fact of the matter was that the Canadian government had spent about a million dollars to send me to test pilot school. They had every right to tell me where to go.

  We started getting ready to move again. But a month later, I got a phone call from the career manager: “I’ve got a great idea. How about I send you straight to Pax River?” It probably didn’t hurt my case that I was the top graduate that year at TPS and had led the team whose research project got top honors. That was a big deal for me, personally, and I took some nationalistic pride in it, too—a Canadian, the top U.S. Air Force test pilot graduate! I was even interviewed by a reporter for the Cold Lake newspaper. No one at the paper could think of a title for the article, though, so they called out to the test center, and whoever answered the phone said, “Just call it ‘Canadian Wins Top Test Pilot’ or something to that effect.” A friend mailed me a copy of the article, which was a nice keepsake as well as a reality check for my ego. The headline that ran? “Canadian Wins Top Test Pilot or Something to that Effect.”

  Helene and I decided to make a family vacation out of our move to Pax River, so in December 1988, we packed up our light blue station wagon with fake wooden side panels, a hideous looking vehicle we called The Limo, and drove from California to Maryland. We were a young couple with three little kids, seeing the southern states for the very first time: we went to SeaWorld, explored caves, spent December 25 in Baton Rouge—it was a great adventure.

  So was our time at Pax. We rented a farmhouse instead of living in base housing, which was a nice change for everyone. After a while Helene got a job as a realtor because the hours were somewhat flexible; Kyle, Evan and Kristin all eventually started school. And I tested F-18s, deliberately putting them out of control way up high, then figuring out how to recover as they fell to Earth. At first I was pretty tentative, because I’d spent my life trying to control airplanes, not send them ripping all over the place, but as I gained confidence I started trying different techniques. By the end I was hooked on the feeling: just how far out of control could I get the plane to go? In that program we developed some good recovery techniques, counterintuitive ones that wound up saving planes as well as pilots’ lives.

  Meanwhile, I was still thinking about what qualifications I would need if the CSA ever started hiring again. An advanced degree seemed like a must, so I worked evenings and weekends to complete a master’s degree in aviation systems at the University of Tennessee, which had a great distance learning program. I only had to show up to defend my thesis. Probably my most significant accomplishment at Pax River, though, was to pilot the first flight test of an external burning hydrogen propulsion engine, an engine that would make a plane fly far faster than the speed of sound. The paper that Sharon Houck, the flight test engineer, and I wrote about our research won The Society of Experimental Test Pilots’ top award. For us, it was like winning an Oscar, not least because the ceremony was held in Beverly Hills and the audience included legendary pilots like Scott Crossfield, the first person in the world to fly at Mach 2, twice the speed of sound.

  To cap it all off, I was named the U.S. Navy test pilot of the year in 1991. My tour was drawing to a close and I’d achieved the American dream—citizenship notwithstanding. My plan was to relax a bit and enjoy our final year in Maryland, spend more time with the kids and play a little more guitar. And then the Canadian Space Agency took out an ad in the newspaper.

  Wanted: Astronauts.

  I had about 10 feverish days to write and submit my resumé. Helene and I set about making this thing the most impressive document ever to emerge from rural Maryland. Certainly it was one of the most voluminous: there
were pages and pages, listing everything I’d ever done, every honor and award and course I could remember. This was back in the day of the dot matrix printer, so we decided we should get it professionally printed, on high quality paper. Then Helene decreed it should be bound, too. That would catch their eye! A professionally bound resumé, approximately the size of a phone book. But we didn’t stop there: I had a francophone friend translate the entire thing into perfect French, and we had that version separately printed and bound. We proofed both documents so many times that at night I was dreaming about errant commas, and then we seriously debated driving to Ottawa so we could be 100 percent certain my application got there on time. Reluctantly, I agreed to trust a courier—then called the CSA to be sure the package had actually arrived. It had, along with 5,329 other applications. That was January 1992. What followed was the least comfortable five-month period of my life. I kept trying to do everything right but there was no feedback and no way to tell if I was succeeding or not.

  We heard nothing for weeks, but finally a letter arrived: I’d made it to the top 500 round! The next step was to fill out some psychiatric evaluation forms. I did, and the response was, “You’ll hear from us, yes or no, within a few weeks.” The “few weeks” came and went. Radio silence. Another week dragged by. Had I come off as so psychologically unbalanced that they were concerned to tell me I was a “no”? Eventually I couldn’t stand the uncertainty any longer and phoned the CSA. The guy who answered said, “Wait a minute, let me look at the list. Hadfield. Hmmm … Oh yeah, here’s Hadfield. Congratulations, you’ve made it to the next level.” Not for the last time, I wondered whether this whole process was in fact a cunningly designed stress test to see how applicants coped with uncertainty and irritation.

  By this point, there were 100 of us left. I was asked to go to Washington, D.C., for an interview with an industrial psychologist, who met me in the lobby of a hotel and announced, “I didn’t rent a hall or anything, we’ll just talk in my room.” As we headed up there, all I could think was that if I were a woman, I really would not be feeling good about this at all. When we got to his room, he invited me to make myself comfortable, and I hesitated: bed or chair—which would say the right thing about me? I opted for the chair and answered some questions that were fairly obviously intended to reveal little more than severe psychoses. If I remember correctly, he asked whether I’d ever wanted to kill my mother.

  More weeks of waiting, but the phone did finally ring: 50 of us had been given the nod to go to Toronto for more interviews. Fifty! At this point I did allow myself to believe I had a chance of being selected, and decided it was time to tell my career manager what I was up to. In the U.S., the military pre-selects applicants; you apply to your service and they decide whose names to put forward to NASA. But in Canada, the military had no role in the process, and I think they were rather confused when I called and said, “Thought I should let you know that I’ve applied to be an astronaut, so you might need to replace me at Pax River a little earlier than planned—or not.”

  Nothing was much clearer to me after Toronto, where I had initial medical tests to make sure I was basically healthy, as well as a lengthy panel interview with a few CSA people, including Bob Thirsk, one of the first Canadian astronauts. I went back to Maryland, where Helene was excited and confident, and I tried to lead my normal life but could not forget for a moment what was hanging in the balance. For so long, becoming an astronaut had been a theoretical concept, but now that it was really happening—or not—it was horribly nerve-wracking. Would the 9-year-old boy achieve his dreams?

  Then I made the final round. Twenty candidates were being summoned to Ottawa at the end of April for a week, so they could get a really good look at us. I was already exercising and eating carefully, but now I really got serious. I wanted to be sure my cholesterol was low—I knew they’d put us under the microscope, medically speaking—and that I was the picture of good health. I figured out the 100 things they might ask me and practiced my answers. Then I practiced them in French. When I got to Ottawa my first thought was that I had some serious competition. The other 19 applicants were impressive. Some had Ph.D.s. Some were military college graduates like me. Some had reams of publications to their names. There were doctors and scientists and test pilots, and everyone was trying to project casual magnificence. Of course, the set-up could not have been more anxiety inducing. No one even knew how many of us might make the final cut. Six? One? I was trying to appear serenely unconcerned while subtly implying that I was the obvious choice, with all the qualifications they were looking for. I hoped.

  It was a busy week. There was a mock press conference, to see whether we were skilled at public relations or could be trained to do it. There were in-depth medical exams involving many vials of bodily fluids and a great deal of poking and prodding. But the real make-or-break event was an hour-long panel interview, which included CSA bigwigs, PR people and astronauts. I thought about it all week: How to stand out, yet not be a jerk? What were the best answers to the obvious questions? What should I not say? I’m pretty sure I was the last interview of the week, but in any event the panel members were clearly accustomed to one another’s interviewing styles and in the habit of deferring to Mac Evans, who later went on to head the CSA. When it was time to answer a question, they’d say, “Mac, you want to take this one?” I felt I’d bonded a little with these people over the past week, and when someone asked me a really tough question, it just popped out of my mouth: “Mac, you want to take this one?” It was a gamble and could have come off as arrogance, but they laughed uproariously, which bought me another minute to think up a decent answer. However, there was no actual feedback. I had no idea whether they liked me more or less than anyone else. I headed back to Maryland having no clue whether they were going to choose me or not.

  In parting, we’d been told that on a particular Saturday in May, all 20 of us would get a phone call between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. to confirm whether we’d been selected or rejected. When that Saturday finally arrived, I decided the best thing to do to make the time pass more quickly would be to go water-skiing with friends who had a boat, so that’s what we did. Then Helene and I went back to the house to eat lunch and watch the clock. We figured they’d call the people they wanted to hire first, so if someone declined, they could move on to the next name on the list. We were right: shortly after 1:00 the phone rang, and I picked it up in the kitchen. It was Mac Evans, asking if I wanted to be an astronaut.

  I did, of course. I always had.

  But my main emotion was not joy or surprise or even huge enthusiasm. It was an enormous rush of relief, as though a vast internal dam of self-imposed pressure had finally burst. I had not let myself down. I had not let Helene down. I had not let my family down. This thing we’d worked toward all this time was actually going to happen. Mac told me I could tell my family, as long as they understood it needed to be kept entirely under wraps, so after Helene and I absorbed the news—insofar as we could—I called my mother and swore her to secrecy. She must have started phoning people as soon as she hung up. By the time I got my grandfather on the line, it was old news.

  In the subsequent months, there would be excitement, a secret meeting with the other three new astronauts, then hoopla and publicity, even some pomp and circumstance. But the day I got the call from the CSA, I felt as though I’d suddenly, safely, reached the summit of a mountain I’d been climbing since I was 9 years old, and was now looking over the other side. It was impossible, yet it had happened. I was an astronaut.

  Only, as it turned out, I wasn’t yet. Becoming an astronaut, someone who reliably makes good decisions when the consequences really matter, takes more than a phone call. It’s not something anyone else can confer on you, actually. It takes years of serious, sustained effort, because you need to build a new knowledge base, develop your physical capabilities and dramatically expand your technical skill set. But the most important thing you need to change? Your mind. You need to learn to think li
ke an astronaut.

  I was just getting started.

  1

  THE TRIP TAKES A LIFETIME

  ONE MORNING A STRANGE THOUGHT occurs to me shortly after waking: the socks I am about to put on are the ones I’ll wear to leave Earth. That prospect feels real yet surreal, the way a particularly vivid dream does. The feeling intensifies at breakfast, when reporters jostle each other to get a good photo, as though I’m a condemned man and this is my last meal. Similarly, a little later on, when the technicians help me into my custom-made spacesuit for pressure checks, the joviality feels forced. It’s the moment of truth. The suit needs to function perfectly—it is what will keep me alive and able to breathe if the spacecraft depressurizes in the vacuum of space—because this isn’t a run-through.

  I am actually leaving the planet today.

  Or not, I remind myself. There are still hours to go, hours when anything could go wrong and the launch could be scrubbed. That thought, combined with the fact that I’m now wearing a diaper just in case we get stuck on the launch pad for a very long time, steers my interior monologue away from the portentous and toward the practical. There’s a lot to remember. Focus.

  Once everyone in the crew is suited up, we all get into the elevator in crew quarters to ride down to the ground and out to our rocket ship. It’s one of those space-age moments I dreamed about as a little kid, except for the slow—really slow—elevator. Descent from the third floor takes only slightly less time than it does to boil an egg. When we finally head outside to walk toward the big silver Astro van that will take us to the launch pad, it’s that moment everyone knows: flashbulbs pop in the pre-dawn darkness, the crowd cheers, we wave and smile. In the van, we can see the rocket in the distance, lit up and shining, an obelisk. In reality, of course, it’s a 4.5-megaton bomb loaded with explosive fuel, which is why everyone else is driving away from it.