‘I spent 165 days in space – there’s one question I get asked the most’

As a former astronaut with three space missions under his belt, Chris Hadfield is an object of both fascination and curiosity. Spacemen and women do all manner of incredible work up there, but Hadfield gets asked one question more than almost any other: how do they go to the loo in zero gravity?

“People are curious about human bodily functions, because it’s common to us all,” he says, smiling. “But actually, it’s a terrific teaching opportunity.”

Hadfield has fielded such opportunities in talks all over the world since retiring in 2013. Next year, the astronaut, who became globally famous after performing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” during his 2013 space trip (it has 22 million views on YouTube), will tour the UK with his new show, Exploring The New Space Age, which, he says, will look at the “rapidly changing world of space innovation” within the context of a “constantly evolving $2trn space economy”.

Also: toilet habits. When such questions arise – and inevitably they do – then “I will bring that person up on stage with me, we will get a chair, and we’ll do the mime version of going to the bathroom in space.”

This serves two functions: firstly, to entertain, but also to usher forth broader subjects of human physiology, and physics in general.

“We can then talk about, say, how the sewage system in central London works, and how the body works without gravity. You can answer that mundane question a thousand ways, and you can make it memorable. Or, you know, you can just talk about plumbing.” He leans forward. “As long as the person is asking the question out of genuine curiosity, then it’s a privilege to answer it.”

Hadfield has long accepted that such inquisitiveness simply comes with the territory. “I recognise that my life experience has been nearly unique in all of human history,” he says. “I didn’t pay my way into space. I was a public servant for 35 years, in the air force, and with the space agency. So there is a huge amount of payback that is implied.”

Now 66 years old, he appears – on my computer screen, at least – inexplicably ageless. Aside from the greying hair, he could pass for 20 years younger. His moustache, an object of fascination in itself, continues to have the rigidity of a broom.

Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, he knew what he wanted to do with his life very early on. “When I was nine, I watched Neil [Armstrong] and Buzz [Aldrin] walk on the moon,” he says, “and I just thought of all the things that humans were doing that were new. [Space travel] was pushing our ability, individually and collectively, to the very edge of what we were capable of, and I just thought that of all the things I might do in my life, that this would be the most challenging, interesting and exciting.

“And so I decided, that night – July 20, 1969 – a month before I turned 10, even though I was from a country that had no astronaut programme or rockets… I thought that if there was any way I could somehow qualify [to become an astronaut], then I was going to do it.”

I suggest that by achieving his dream, wildly ambitious as it was, he is, in a literal sense, extraordinary. Abruptly, his smiling face becomes a frowning one.

“I don’t know any ordinary people,” he scolds. “Every single person that you sit next to, no matter their age, knows things that you don’t know, has done things you haven’t done, and are fighting battles they are keeping quiet about. As soon as you start thinking that the people next to you are ordinary, then you are missing out on an enormous part of the actual human experience.”

Hadfield, a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot, journeyed to space three times: on space shuttle Atlantis in 1995, space shuttle Endeavour in 2001, and in a Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station in 2012/13, where he spent six months. He was kept busy.

“During my first flight we built part of the Russian space station Mir. No one had ever done that before. On my second we built a huge robot arm onto the ISS, and on my third we ran about 200 different experiments, everything from collecting the subatomic particles of the universe in the alpha magnetic spectrometer to try and build a combined physical model of how the universe works, right through to fluid physics. Up there,” he points, “we find and discover and invent things daily.”

Whenever we discuss astronauts, there is much talk about how they lead life afterwards, a tacit suggestion of their lives having peaked, impossible to top. How, then, to follow it meaningfully? And how to navigate an eternal groundhog day in which all anyone wants to talk about is your time there. Between them, Aldrin and Armstrong struggled with depression, alcoholism and “significant emotional challenges”.

Not Hadfield, though. Since retiring, he has become a public educator on his specialist subject. He has written books about his missions, and also branched out into fictional thrillers. He plays the guitar, and sings songs. “Whenever I get onstage, people want me to play ‘Space Oddity’ because they assume that that’s the only song I know,” he says. “But luckily David Bowie wrote a beautifully complicated song. So I’m grateful for that.”

What was it like, I wonder, knowing that the moment his shuttle touched back down to Earth, life would never be the same again? That he’d forever after have a very particular kind of fame?

“Well,” he says, frowning again, “I think your initial perception is incorrect. Who were the third crew that walked on the moon? Like, can you even name the three people on Apollo 11, the most famous astronaut crew in all of history?”

Neil, Buzz… and somebody else?*

“It’s a misperception, then, that somehow astronauts are doing this to become famous.”

I interrupt to suggest that that is not what I said, nor what I meant. “No, but I am telling you how it looks from my point of view. It is a lifetime of risk, of service, of putting someone’s needs ahead of your own in order to try and accomplish something that is right on the edge of our ability. That has a great purity and power to it. For most astronauts, very briefly, there is a little hubbub, but then they go back to normal life. Some are completely reclusive, and some think that sharing the experience is important.”

Hadfield was firmly of the latter camp, and his fame does indeed have an enduring currency. Thirteen years since his final flight, he continues to share his experiences and expound upon our general interest in space travel, which recently received a boost thanks to the Artemis II mission, which orbited the Moon in April.

“There is some amazing stuff going on in space exploration, and we’re transitioning now from exploration to settlement on the Moon,” he says. Hesitantly, I wonder whether this is a good idea. We seem to have made a mess of our own planet, after all. Hadfield looks dumbfounded.

“Well, you don’t live in the same house you were born in, do you? Have you never left London? It’s human behaviour to be curious about the rest of the world, and the rest of the universe. So it’s a specious question, really, because [exploration] is absolutely fundamental to who we are.”

And does he support Elon Musk’s dream of settling on Mars? “If you asked me this question in 1960, it would have seemed much less plausible,” says Hadfield. “Mars, though, is far further away than most people think.” It’s hard enough getting to the Moon, he adds, “so all the way to Mars is orders of magnitude more complex and more difficult; the Moon is closer. You have to wait until technology is good enough. It’s like going to Antarctica in 1850.”

So that settlement on the Moon, what would it look like, and will it happen in our lifetime? “Well, how long are you planning to live?” quips Hadfield. “But in this case, [we are] starting to establish permanent habitation. We’ve got to learn a whole lot, discover things, and have to push the technology. But the Chinese absolutely have a building-block approach, and they are going to have people on the moon within three-and-a-half years from now, and the new accelerated programme from Nasa has announced it’s hellbent on beating that. The Chinese have said 2029, 2030. These aren’t precursor missions – these are initial landings to determine where we should live on the moon…”

So it will come down to a race, then? No happy collusion between East and West?

“If you frame it this way, it’s familiar and exciting,” he says, brightening. “Everyone loves a race, right?”

‘Chris Hadfield: Exploring the New Space Age’ tours the UK and Ireland in May and June 2027. Tickets are available here

*Answer: Michael Collins – who did not set foot on the Moon, but remained orbiting in the Apollo 11 command module while Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the surface in the lunar module.