ChrisHadfield.qxp_Layout 7 19/12/2016 11:16 Page 3
SCIENCE
football? Having good sewer or rail systems? How do we apportion all the different things that we think are worth doing as part of an organised society? And exploration and research and development are always part of that. But people need to feel aware, and therefore inspired. Some of the most inspiring things we do are way over the edge of normal society and push people to the limits of their abilities, and if you are someone who is doing one of those new, complex, interesting activities, it’s important to do it as well as you possibly can, and share the experience so other people can be inspired to do something different with their lives. “It’s like climbing Everest – it’s on the edge of society but at the same time inspires people to change who they are, or push themselves to the limit in a way they might otherwise never have. The results are measurable sometimes – when we came back from my third space flight, they had discussed my flight and the impact it had on the youth, in Irish parliament, and there was a measurable change in the number of students who came out of high school the following year, and went into science and math programmes at university, because of our ability to successfully share our experience.”
Space Oddity Then, of course, Chris made a big impact with his 2013 David Bowie cover – the video for which went viral across the planet, with its intriguing juxtaposition of fantasy and reality, past and future, art and science. “I’ve always been a musician,” he explains. “And there have been guitars on space stations since the 1970s – the Russians had one on their early stations and transferred it to Mir, and when I was there in 1995, that guitar was there. In fact, I also brought a guitar up to Mir that’s now in the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. “So music on board a space ship was nothing new, and lots of astronauts play and sing, but my brother and I had written a Christmas carol called Jewel in the Night and when I released it just prior to Christmas 2013 and my son Evan put it on Soundcloud, a lot of people suddenly realised there was someone up off the Earth, recording music, and started asking for me to do Space Oddity. “I’d never covered Bowie – he’s just not the type of guy that you cover. He’s a terrific original artist and musician. So I dismissed the idea. But Evan was insistent, and pointed out that it would have a big potential impact and I’d be doing it for other people, not me. So I did a quick version to satisfy him more than anything – he’d rewritten the words so the astronaut didn’t die in the song, which seemed like a nice, important change...
The Richat Structure in Mauritania, also known as the Eye of the Sahara, as seen from the International Space Station. Image © CSA/NASA
26 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
|
JANUARY 2017
“Of course, Bowie had written that song prior to the Moon landing – just after Space Odyssey came out but before Apollo 11. He was just out of his teens I think, and was guessing completely as to what space flight was going to be like. So it didn’t hurt to update the words a little bit, with some of the things that had changed since then, but what really convinced me was – when I listened to my vocal recording – how it sounded more poignant, more haunting, more applicable than I expected it to. I thought; ‘Maybe this is worth doing’ so I put the guitar underneath then enlisted a friend named Emm Gryner, who used to be a singer in Bowie’s band in the late ’90s, and she did that beautiful piano intro. Once we had the instrumental track back up on the space station,
❝
...Bowie was just out of his teens when he wrote Space Oddity, prior to the Moon landing, so he was guessing completely as to what space flight was going to be like...
❞ I redid my vocals – and when we sent it to Bowie, he loved it. But then my son weighed back in and said, ‘Dad, you have to make a video’. By this time I was commander of the space station, so I was awfully busy up there, but one Saturday I floated around for an hour or two and made all the raw video and sent it down to my son to edit down. “Meanwhile, we had a serious problem up on the space station with an ammonia leak and had to do an emergency space walk so we ended up getting it done just in time. Evan released it the day before I came home and the impact was huge – hundreds of millions of people have seen that video. I think it feeds back to the idea of people seeing space exploration more realistically, for what it is. It isn’t some strange, weird, esoteric, fringe thing, it’s just people, living in a different place with culture and art and a reinterpretation and understanding of who we are. A lot of people who didn’t even know the space station existed, suddenly knew about it because of the Space Oddity cover. So I’ve been pretty amazed by the impact.”