From anti-gravity fist fights to dressing up as a woman: Chris Hadfield reveals the bizarre life of an astronaut living on the International Space Station



Chris Hadfield recently returned from a five month stint on the ISS



He says living in space gave him a unique perspective of life on Earth

He also reveals some unlikely heroes and why he loves Britain's Got Talent

He describes being an astronaut as 'one of the very rare experiences in life that is better than you dreamed it would be'

In a spacesuit, most of your senses are weakened. The only thing you can hear is your own breathing, and over your radio, a broken voice transmitting from Earth.

‘Then you look up from your task and the universe rudely slaps you in the face,’ says astronaut Chris Hadfield. ‘It’s overpowering visually, and no other senses warn you that you’re about to be attacked by raw beauty.’

Hadfield, who recently returned from a five month-stint in on the International Space Station (ISS), isn’t someone to get easily emotional. As an astronaut who has a fear of heights, he’s spent most of his life learning to control his reactions.

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Chris Hadfield was the first Canadian to walk in space. He recently returned from a five month-stint in on the International Space Station where he served as commander

But when he talks about Earth, you can hear a raw emotion that hasn’t diminished despite being a veteran of spaceflight.



From his 200 mile-high perch on the International Space Station (ISS), Hadfield has tweeted hundreds of photos showing life in orbit.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, the former ISS commander recalls one moment that stunned him so much, he forgot to pick up the camera.

‘Imagine you’re lying in bed, with your eyes closed, and there is this tremendous light show coming through your eyes that keeps exploding,’ he says, describing an immense storm over Indonesia.

‘It looked as if someone with a fat paint brush was swiping it over the Earth for about 500 miles, this great bright light, and it was continuous, back and forth…If there had been gravity, my jaw would have dropped.’

Photographer: Hadfield is pictured on Tuesday photographing Earth in the Cupola with the 'big lens'

Like no other astronaut before him, Hadfield has found a way to humanise space travel.



He may have piloted a spaceship with a four-second window from failure to death, but it was his cosmic rendition of David Bowie’s Space Oddity that made him a household name back on Earth.

The YouTube video, which instantly went viral, came complete with strummed chords, pensive gazes and a floating guitar.

The 53-year-old hopes to show that astronauts are just like anybody else. ‘People ask all the time, when will normal people be able to fly in space?’ he says. ‘Like we’re only half-normal, like we weren’t born normal. But we’re just a bunch of people.’

At any given time on the ISS, for instance, you can see an astronaut playfully pirouetting or somersaulting through the air. Hadfield says the novelty of zero gravity never got old.

Chris Hadfield, the former commander on the ISS, pictured playing with water and the lack of gravity

CHRIS HADFIELD'S MOST POPULAR SOCIAL MEDIA MOMENTS

In February, William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek, called up Hadfield while on the ISS to ask what it was like to live in space. Their conversation drew in other Star Trek names: George Takei, Will Wheaton and Leonard Nimoy all tuned into the broadcasted call. Hadfield has undertaken a number of a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) sessions which became some of the most popular on the site. He has shown his Twitter followers how astronaut do everything from play scramble, brush their teeth and even cry while in space. In an off-planet joke, Hadfield sent a series of tweets describing his view of a UFO that approached the station.

The first song recorded in space was performed by Hadfield. His song 'Jewel in the night' was recorded on the ISS last Christmas Eve. His rendition of Space Oddity got the attention of David Bowie himself, who re-tweeted it quoting his 1995 song Hallo Spaceboy.

It wasn’t just his zero gravity musical talents that warmed him to the hearts of millions, the Canadian also launched a cooking programme while on the ISS.



Named 'Chris Hadfield's Space Kitchen', the series featured recipes such as a honey and peanut butter tortillas and chocolate pudding.

In another video, Hadfield taught the world how to brush their teeth in space. ‘You need to swallow the toothpaste,’ he says. ‘Spitting it out is a very bad idea.’



One of his favourite things to do was 'try and get absolutely perfectly still, and see how long I could go without touching anything. My best was only a few minutes – harder than it seems!'

During this time, Hadfield’s home was the ISS, a spaceship the size of a football field with more living space than a five bedroom house. Parts of the spaceship are so large, that astronauts can get stuck in the middle of a room without anything to push off.

Inside, he describes it as an Alice in Wonderland-type world where you have to decide which way will be ‘up’.



In the gym area for example, the treadmill sticks out from the wall while to reach the viewing station you have to float upside down.

Hadfield was commander of the ISS, a spaceship the size of a football field with more living space than a five bedroom house. Inside, he describes it as an Alice in Wonderland-type world where you have to decide which way will be 'up'

While zero gravity on ISS can be entertaining, it can bring with it some unique challenges. For instance, in his memoirs ‘An astronaut’s guide to life on Earth’, Hadfield describes how even sweat during exercise can pose a problem.

‘It just accumulates on your body like a slowly expanding liquid shield,’ he says. ‘If you turn your head quickly, that huge, wet glob of sweat might dislodge, sail across the module and smack an unsuspecting crewmate in the face.’

Incidents like this, combined with the isolation and duration of space flight can lead to tensions boiling over.



According to stories of some of the first cosmonauts, there have been fist fights on space stations and astronauts have refused to speak to one another for days on end.

That’s why, for Hadfield, comedy is so vital for keeping morale up and conflicts at bay. He says there were many incidents that still make him smile, but one particular moment sticks in his mind.

Hadfield took more than 40,000 pictures from space and tweeted hundreds of them. Pictured is the Glacier tongues in the Himalayas taken January 8

‘For some reason, one of the crew members decided he should come to dinner dressed as a Hawaiian lady,’ he laughs. ‘He was looking for breasts, and found some pudding cups. He came floating around the corner wearing this getup, singing Hawaiian music.

‘Unfortunately he brushed into the hatch and his pudding cups came loose. They were all akimbo. He was willing to absolutely mock himself to better the emotional state and psychology of the group. We did things in that vein all the time.’

For someone revered as extraordinary, it’s in the ordinary and every day that Hadfield often draws inspiration. ‘A beautiful insight can come from an unexpected quarter,’ he said.

‘A good example is Britain’s Got Talent, where you have some person that, if you stood next to on a bus, you would have absolutely no idea that they have some sort of skill that would absolutely floor you. I try to find within each person the stuff that is definitely worth trying model after.

The down-to-Earth spaceman recalls his Auntie Florence as one unlikely inspiration. ‘I’ve never talked about Auntie Flo before, and it’s never occurred to me really, but she was a lady I greatly respected. She was from Yorkshire and her first husband was killed in the First World War, so she was a very young widow.

‘She married again, and her second husband died early as well. She spent most of her life alone, and not a glorious existence at all. I hope I can have the strength and the patience to face through life with the depth that Auntie Flo did.’

Hadfield is now back on Earth, adjusting to life without floating tortillas, death-defying spacewalks and cross-dressing astronauts. He describes life in space as being 'one of the very rare experiences in life that is better than you dreamed it would be.'



But unlike many before him, he has found the transition relatively painless. Hadfield says being in space gave him a new insight into life back on Earth. And he isn’t sad to have left.

‘I’m absolutely the opposite,’ he says. ‘It’s as if you said “you must be so sad that you had chocolate cake 15 years ago”. Well, no, I’m still alive and because I had the best cake 15 years ago, it doesn’t mean that everything else tastes bad all of a sudden.'