Chris Hadfield Astronaut Quotations

When I was nine, I wanted to be an astronaut but at that time there weren't any Canadian astronauts. You had to be American or Soviet. So many things will be possible in your lifetimes.

In the astronaut business - the shuttle is a very complicated vehicle; it's the most complicated flying machine ever built. And in the astronaut business, we have a saying, which is, 'There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse.'

We have never lost a crew member on the space station, but of course, the Columbia accident. I was - I'd already been an astronaut for a decade when the crew of Columbia was killed. And I went through test pilot school. Rick Husband and I were out at Edwards at test pilot school together. He was the commander of Columbia.

Nothing focuses your mind quite like flying a jet. That's one reason NASA requires that astronauts fly T-38s: it forces us to concentrate and prioritize in some of the same ways we need to in a rocket ship.

And now for Return to Flight, I'm chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian.

"What's the next thing that's going to kill me?" is a mantra for pilots and astronauts.

I wasn’t destined to be an astronaut. I had to turn myself into one.