Chris Hadfield Quotes

The first 6 hours of being in orbit were a little difficult on my stomach. I think things just didn't know where to go!

Adaption of the human body in space is not yet mastered. As soon as you hit space, you feel your body is going through a period of mutation. There's no blood in your head; you have a hard time swallowing. We're not born to naturally be in space.

When you talk to crews that went to Mir or have gone up to International Space Station, they say that you go through different phases of adaptation or getting used to the space environment.

This has been a great experience for me. The first couple of days you don't always feel too well. You adjust to the fluid shifting, how to fly through space without hitting things or anybody else. But then you get in a groove.

The most uncomfortable thing about going to space is coming home. It's a little strange to get used to gravity again.

The microgravity or the very, very low amount of gravity that we have up in space forces some changes in different processes. It forces changes in us as human beings.

Life as an astronaut in space is a very interesting one. There are things we all take for granted here on earth, like gravity, that can make things a bit challenging. One of the fun things about getting here is the zero gravity and floating around. But it also makes things very difficult.

The reason space missions need artificial gravity is clear: humans simply did not evolve to live in zero gravity.

When you lift off, the pressure is supposed to be maximum. But actually, it was very benign. Very enjoyable. But as soon as the engines cut off and you get to zero gravity, you felt as if you were being pushed off your seat. You feel disoriented. You don't feel aligned with anything. I felt for a few good hours that I was falling.

Adjusting to space is easier than adjusting to Earth for me.

Gravity is a really heavy force and you don't realize how heavy it is until you haven't felt it for six and a half months.

After floating for nine and a half months in space, gravity is not your friend.

The one thing we can't really train for is weightlessness, real weightlessness. It's a ton of fun. It's pure Newtonian physics. You push in one direction, you go in the opposite direction with an equal force.

Zero G and I feel fine.

We were only on orbit a little over two days, so we had no adverse effects from being weightless.

It gives me vertigo to watch TV dramas.

We wanted to be in great shape, we wanted to be able to cope with zero gravity, we wanted to be able to cope with accelerations and decelerations and so on. So all of us trained so that we were probably in the best physical condition we had ever been in up until that point.

Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.

I have vertigo. Vertigo makes it feel like the floor is pitching up and down. Things seem to be spinning. It's like standing on the deck of a ship in really high seas.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

The real pleasure was having the chance to enjoy being weightless, and the other was to spend some time looking out at this beautiful Earth that we're all lucky to inhabit.

I could have gone on flying through space forever.

I still dream about being on the space station with the feeling of being weightless. The weightlessness is the most amazing, relaxing and natural feeling.

Now, I've never flown in space; but the folks who have say that on landing day, you know, you've just spent maybe a week and a half, sometimes two weeks in orbit and you're used to the things happening slowly in space.

When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.