The Beatles: Space Pioneers

This month marks the 50th anniversary of The Beatles' first visit to North America and their historic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, events that changed popular music and our wider society.

As a fully paid up member of the Baby Boom generation, I remember that television appearance, but I also recall another television event featuring The Beatles that marked the maturation of a space age technology that also changed our lives and our world. This same technology also revolutionized the Olympics, making today's wall-to-wall coverage possible, regardless of where the games are staged.

When the Fab Four first appeared on Ed Sullivan in 1964, the television signals were beamed from New York across the United States and Canada by microwave relays. The Beatles' many television appearances in the United Kingdom before that time could not be shown live in North America because the means didn't exist to move the signals across the Atlantic Ocean. Various ideas had been tried or were being tried to beam signals across oceans by bouncing the signals off of satellites. Giant balloons called Echo were put into orbit for this purpose, and one infamous U.S. Air Force experiment saw millions of needles put into orbit to see if signals would bounce off of them.

Bouncing signals from satellites and needles didn't work very well, and so engineers and scientists decided to try satellites that amplified signals before beaming them to distant receiving stations on Earth. Telstar, immortalized in a 1962 instrumental hit by the Tornadoes, was an early trial of this technology. But Telstar flew in a low orbit that allowed only brief periods of signal transmission.

Arthur C. Clarke, who later became famous as a science fiction author, had suggested putting satellites into geostationary orbit to facilitate communications. Such an orbit lies directly over the equator at an altitude of about 35,000 kilometres above the Earth. A satellite in such an orbit takes exactly one Earth day to circle the Earth, and hence the satellite appears to be stationary to an earthbound observer. 

This is a huge distance, however, and only the creation of the traveling wave tube and other advances made these satellites technically feasible. The first geostationary communications satellite, Syncom 3, was launched in August 1964, six months after The Beatles' first appearance on Ed Sullivan, and it was used to transmit live television of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics from Japan to North America.

The first geostationary communications satellite over the Atlantic Ocean, Intelsat I or Early Bird, was put into orbit in 1965. More of these geostationary satellites were launched over the next two years, and even the Soviet Union began to launch communications satellites, albeit into different types of orbits.

In 1966, broadcasters from around the world, including Canada, the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia, agreed to broadcast the first worldwide television show using the then brand new geostationary communications satellite links, and months of planning and preparation began, involving thousands of people.

Before the two-and-a-half hour show, called Our World, could be broadcast on Sunday, June 25, 1967,  Soviet Bloc nations had pulled out of the broadcast as part of the political posturing following the Six-Day War in the Middle East earlier that month. 

In spite of this problem, the show went on the air, featuring live segments from around the world. Canada's contribution included a conversation between the CBC's Stanley Burke, the Peter Mansbridge of his day, and famed philosopher and communications theorist Marshall McLuhan. Another segment from the United States showed preparations for the first launch of the Saturn V rocket that would later propel Apollo astronauts to the Moon.

But one segment from London, England, became the most memorable part of the show, which was watched by 150 million people in 26 countries. The Beatles performed a song specially composed for the show by John Lennon, "All You Need is Love." Joining the Beatles inside the studio was a full symphony orchestra and many friends of The Beatles, including The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Keith Moon, Marianne Faithfull, and Graham Nash, who joined in the chorus of the song, which soon became a successful single release.

The entire show was broadcast in black and white, but the Beatles segment was later colourized when it was shown years later on The Beatles Anthology. The segment is also memorable because of the psychedelic attire worn by The Beatles and their friends for this event, which took place early in 1967's "Summer of Love."

Although appearances by The Beatles on live television were very rare by then, satellite television broadcasts from every corner of the Earth soon became commonplace, and thanks in part to Canadian advances in communications satellites, direct-to-home satellite services became part of everyday life in the late 1980s. Those satellite dishes are pointed at geostationary communications satellites.

The Olympics grew exponentially because of satellite broadcasting. After the initial broadcasts from Tokyo in 1964, Olympic Games starting in 1968 were broadcast around the world as a matter of routine.

Even though the Sochi Winter Olympics this month took place on the other side of the Earth, the broadcasts had the same quality and immediacy as the 2010 Winter Olympics that took place in our back yard in Vancouver, thanks in a large degree to satellite technology.

The availability of satellite broadcast technology has changed our lives, and The Beatles and the Olympics all featured in the early history of this advance. Whenever I hear that great Beatles anthem, "All You Need is Love," I think of the satellite technology that spawned it.

Canadians Should Be Proud of All Our Astronauts

Astronaut Robert Thirsk speaks after accepting honorary doctorate from Vancouver Island University, January 31, 2014. Chris Gainor photo

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's star turn as commander of the International Space Station in 2013 has deservedly attracted an unparalleled degree of attention, but his individual achievements also point to the fact that all of our Canadian astronauts are very special people.

This was driven home to me again on the last day of January when Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk came to Nanaimo to accept an honorary degree from Vancouver Island University. 

Thirsk was one of Canada's original astronauts, selected in 1983 and quickly chosen as Marc Garneau's backup for his historic first flight by a Canadian astronaut in October 1984. After the long hiatus caused by the loss of the shuttle Challenger, Thirsk finally flew aboard the shuttle Columbia for 17 days in 1996 in the STS-78 life sciences mission.

The launch of the International Space Station in 1998 meant that American and Canadian astronauts would have to work closely with Russian cosmonauts. Thirsk became the first Canadian astronaut to be qualified to fly aboard the Russian Soyuz ferry craft, and in 2009, he became the first Canadian to fly aboard Soyuz to the ISS and back, and the first to get a long duration stay on the ISS, in his case six months. 

In Nanaimo, Thirsk spoke eloquently about how his views of Earth from orbit made him into an environmentalist. From space, the atmosphere that all life on our planet depends on is just a thin sheath. Increasingly, he said human activities are visible from space, and this underlines how human activities in one place can affect the environment on the other side of the Earth.

Humans are becoming increasingly interdependent on many levels, Thirsk said, pointing not only to environmental and political activities, but to technological advances  and changes in our financial system.

A number of years ago, I saw Thirsk speaking about the topic of exploration. He told the story of a kayak journey he took retracing the footsteps of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, who in 1793 became the first European explorer to cross North America by land to reach the Pacific Ocean. 

Thirsk said his readings of Mackenzie's travels convinced him that Mackenzie possessed many attributes needed by explorers, including determination and leadership. If Mackenzie had lived today rather than in the 18^th century, he would have made an excellent astronaut, Thirsk added.

Canadians still have much to do, exploring the frontiers of science, technology, medicine, and space. “Exploration,” according to Thirsk, “is a Canadian core competency.”

Thirsk has demonstrated his skill as an explorer, and so have other Canadian astronauts, including Hadfield and Garneau, who now is an active Member of Parliament. Roberta Bondar and Julie Payette blazed the trail into space for Canadian women, and Steve MacLean, Dave Williams and Bjarni Tryggvason have had impressive careers as astronauts and in their lives since leaving the astronaut corps.

Thirsk, a medical doctor like Bondar and Williams, now has a leading role in directing Canadian medical research as vice president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Today, Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian Forces pilot like Hadfield, and David Saint-Jacques, a physician and astrophysicist, are in training for their first flights after having joined Canada's astronaut corps in 2009. Like their predecessors, both have a long list of accomplishments even as they await a flight assignment.

Ken Money, who was selected for the Canadian astronaut corps in 1983 but never got to fly in space, had established himself as a pioneer in research about the effects of space travel on the human body even before his astronaut training. 

Over the years, I have encountered people who fell just short of being selected for the Canadian astronaut program, and they have gone on to be top flight researchers in medicine and other sciences. 

Canadian astronauts, whether they are well known like Hadfield or not, are widely respected for their skills and judgement both inside and outside Canada's space program. They are all very special and accomplished people, even when you don't take their space flights into account.

Space Policy Framework Stays the Course

Astronauts David Saint-Jacques and Jeremy Hansen, Industry Minister James Moore, and CSA President Walter Natynczyk at February 7 announcement in Ottawa of Space Policy Framework. Industry Canada

It was hard to determine whether the Harper government wanted to spread the word about the new space policy framework it unveiled on Friday, or hide it.

Industry Minister James Moore announced the framework at a colourful event in the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, flanked by two Canadian astronauts in flight overalls, a class from a local elementary school, and a gaggle of officials headed by Walter Natynczyk, the new president of the Canadian Space Agency.

The policy framework was published in a colourful booklet and online in a website containing videos of Canadian space achievements. Within minutes of the announcement, the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada issued its own release praising the framework for "strengthening the competitiveness" of Canada's space industry. 

But the announcement took place just as the Sochi Winter Olympics opening ceremony was about to begin, and on a morning that saw other and higher profile announcements from the Harper government.

But most important was the content of the policy. The policy framework is notable for three things: It is long on generalities, short on specifics, and it follows very closely on policies that have been in place for decades.

The policy framework emphasizes the importance of Canada's space industry to our economy and points to the use of the private sector for space initiatives whenever possible, messages that are totally consistent with the Harper government's stated goals. 

The Canadian space program has long been oriented in this direction. After Canada's first satellite, Alouette 1, was built in house by government scientists, the Diefenbaker government moved in 1963 to ensure that future satellites and other Canadian space assets be built by private contractors. In the five decades since that time, Canada's space program has focused on developing Canada's space industry above all else, and contracting out the lion's share of that work has consistently been the order of the day under both Liberal and Conservative governments, even after the Canadian Space Agency was established in 1989.

The policy also stresses working together with other countries, which also is not new. Alouette, for example, was a part of a joint program with the United States, as was the Canadarm, and Canada has been a partner in the International Space Station since the beginning. Canada has also has a long history of cooperation with the European Space Agency and other space programs. 

The framework's goal of promoting Canadian innovation in areas such as space robotics follows on Canada's longstanding policy of developing expertise in "niche" areas such as communications satellite technology, remote imaging, and space robotics. 

Another goal of the framework involves "inspiring Canadians" with our space achievements. While the Canadarm and Canadarm2 have become such well-known symbols of Canadian excellence that Canadarm2 is now on our $5 bill, the CSA has often been criticized for the quality of its communications work.

The framework's call for "Canadian interests first" reflects the space program's economic goals, and also the security and sovereignty concerns whose new prominence can be called the signature change made by the Harper government in space policy.  

There are few concrete measures in the framework that haven't been announced before, aside from $17 million in new money for the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to Hubble, and even that is scarcely a surprise since the Canadian hardware for the new telescope has recently been built. Otherwise the framework, which was issued four days before a 2014 federal budget that will not likely contain relief from recent cutbacks to the Canadian space program, was silent on paying for any new initiatives. 

An announcement Moore made last December promising new committees to better coordinate multi-agency space efforts was contained in the framework, and this should assist Natynczyk in clearing up coordination problems that contributed to delays in the Radarsat Constellation program.

The presence of two Canadian astronauts, Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques, at Friday's announcement underlined the framework's provision that the Canadian astronaut program will continue into its fourth decade. With the U.S. space shuttle grounded, rides into space are few and far between, and hopefully this means that Hansen and Saint-Jacques will gain their first flight assignments in the not too distant future.

The new Space Policy Framework, while welcome, provides very little new for our $3.3 billion space industry and the 8,000 high-tech jobs tied to it. Its ultimate effect will depend on the actions and details not announced on Friday, some of which will become clearer in the 2014 federal budget and hopefully in a long term space plan.

The new space policy contains many reassuring words about the importance of Canada's space program and space industry, which suggests that the recent budget cutbacks may be coming to an end. But the words promise little more than a stand pat space program while the Harper government continues to put its highest economic priority on balancing its budget in 2015.

Sir Winston Churchill and the Space Race

Chris Gainor dressed as Sir Winston Churchill in 2013. At left is Olive Bailey, who worked as a codebreaker during World War II at Britain's top secret facility at Bletchley Park.

In my hometown of Victoria B.C., I am known for my public appearances dressed as Sir Winston Churchill, the incomparable British statesman who as prime minister faced down Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime in World War II.

My interest in Churchill was sparked by his central role in the history of the twentieth century, but over time I have become more interested in Churchill's interactions with new technologies.

In his ninety years from 1874 to 1965, Churchill led an extraordinary life that encompassed many changes in warfare and technology. In 1898, he took part in the last great cavalry charge by the British Army, at Omdurman. His last major speech before he stepped down as prime minister in 1955 focused on his concerns about the hydrogen bomb.

Churchill was known for promoting new technologies, including aircraft and tanks in World War I, and radar, computing devices to aid code breakers, nuclear weapons, artificial harbours and many other inventions in World War II. Indeed, Churchill was also known to champion many ideas that failed, such as making an aircraft carrier out of ice.

In his role as a facilitator of technology, Churchill is one of the creators of today's world. In spite of the vast numbers of books that have been written about him, I have yet to see a good book on Churchill's relationship to technology.

What about space exploration? Humanity's thrust into outer space began after Churchill retired in 1955, and so there is relatively little to say about him and the final frontier. Yet Churchill had a role in facilitating space flight when he brought Nazi Germany's rocket program to the attention of Josef Stalin, the Soviet dictator. 

In the summer of 1944, Churchill wrote Stalin about the German V-1 and V-2 missile programs and asked for permission for British experts to visit a former German rocket test range in Poland that had recently been taken by Soviet forces. Stalin responded by sending in a team of Soviet rocket experts, who found that the Germans had taken away most evidence of their rocket work before they surrendered the territories.

In spite of this, the Russians were able to gather pieces of the V-1 and V-2 and associated equipment, including a V-2 combustion chamber, to take back to the Soviet Union. The Russians were astounded by the size of the V-2 rocket, and at the end of the war, Stalin ordered his rocket experts to build rockets like the V-2. The knowledge the Soviet experts gained, some of it with help from German engineers who went to work for them after the war, helped them build far bigger rockets after Stalin's death, rockets capable of launching nuclear warheads to the United States and satellites and spacecraft into orbit and beyond.

 As for the British, their experts were allowed into the test range, but only after the Soviet team had done its work.

Russian rocket pioneer Boris Chertok later wrote: “In many respects for our future [rocket] activities, Churchill’s appeals to Stalin were truly decisive.”

Churchill left 10 Downing Street after an election defeat as the war was ending in 1945, but he returned as prime minister  in 1951 and served until his retirement in 1955. During this time, both the Soviet Union and the United States armed themselves with nuclear weapons, and the cold war between them was widening. 

While Churchill was preoccupied with mediating the differences between the two superpowers, his government was also creating Britain's own nuclear deterrent. This included a decision to develop an intermediate range ballistic missile that became known as Blue Streak. In 1960, long after Churchill left office but before the missile was completed, Blue Streak was cancelled.

The second Churchill government's work on Blue Streak led to two short-lived British space efforts. Blue Streak was used as the first stage for the multinational Europa launcher, which itself was cancelled in the early 1970s, and an associated program, Black Knight, led to a rocket that launched a British satellite in 1971.

Churchill lived to see the beginning of the space race with the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the first humans in 1961. In October 1959, as the first Soviet space probes were reaching the Moon, Churchill had this to say:

 "Let no one believe that the lunar rockets, of which we read in the press, are merely ingenious bits of prestige. They are manifestations of a formidable advance in technology. As with many vehicles of pure research, their immediate uses may not be apparent. But I do not doubt that they will ultimately reap a rich harvest for those who have the imagination and power to develop them and to probe ever more deeply into the mysteries of the universe in which we live."

Rodney G. Rose, 1927-2014

Rod Rose in 1960. NASA Photo

On Christmas Eve, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 made history when they became the first humans to travel to the vicinity of the moon.  At the start of Apollo 8's third orbit of the moon, spacecraft commander Frank Borman called to mission control in Houston to see if Rod Rose was there.

Rose was expecting the call, because he and Borman were friends and neighbours who lived near the  control centre. At the local Episcopal Church, St. Christopher's, both were members of the vestry, the group of lay advisors who helped run the church. 

Two weeks before Apollo 8 left for the moon, Borman found out that he was on the duty list as a lay reader for the Christmas Eve communion at St. Christopher's. Knowing that he was scheduled to be circling the moon at that time, Borman got agreement from the minister, Jim Buckner, that he could deliver his reading from lunar orbit for recording and later playback at the service with Rose's help. 

Rose selected for Borman's reading the Prayer For Vision, Faith and Work by G.F. Weld from "Prayers for the Church Service League," published by the Diocese of Massachusetts, and gave a copy of the prayer to Borman. "We decided to call it experiment P 1, and Frank agreed to give me one lunar orbit notice before he read the prayer so all the recording could be finalized," Rose recalled.

A few minutes after Borman's call to Rose from Apollo 8, capsule communicator Mike Collins said, "Rod Rose is sitting up in the viewing room. He can hear what you say."

"I wonder if he is ready for experiment P1?" Borman asked.

"He says thumbs up on P1," Collins replied.

"Rod and I got together and I was going to record - say a little prayer for our church service tonight," Borman said. When Collins gave the go-ahead, Apollo 8's commander continued, "Okay. This is to Rod Rose and people at St. Christopher's, actually to people everywhere.

"Give us, O God, the  vision which can see Thy love in the world in spite of human failure. Give us the faith, the trust, the goodness in spite of  all of our ignorance and weakness. Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts, and show us what each of us can do to set forth the day of universal peace. Amen."

"Amen," Collins replied.

"I was supposed to lay read tonight and I couldn't quite make it," Borman concluded.

"Roger, I think they understand," Collins said.

This was the first prayer broadcast from space. That evening, the crew of Apollo 8, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and finally Borman read the first 10 verses of Genesis back to Earth as the grey, battered surface at lunar sunset appeared on television pictures they also sent back. Rose went to St. Christopher's with tapes of the prayer that Borman had recorded that morning and the Genesis reading, and both were played at the service. 

Although unknown to the public, Rose was well known to the astronauts and the managers of the Apollo program because he played a key role in organizing the flights. Rose, one of the unsung heroes of the Apollo program, passed away January 8 in Houston at the age of 86 after a long illness.

While most people who worked in Apollo were American, Rose was a prominent member of a small but important group of British and Canadian engineers who helped NASA's early human space programs after they lost their jobs when the Canadian government cancelled a major aircraft program. This group and their work at NASA was the topic of my first book, Arrows to the Moon: Avro's Engineers and the Space Race.

Rodney George Rose was born August 10, 1927, in Huntingdon, England. As a student in wartime and postwar England, Rose had attended the Manchester College of Technology while serving a five-year apprenticeship at A.V. Roe in Manchester. Upon graduating from the college and completing his apprenticeship, Rose won a scholarship to the newly established College of Aeronautics at Cranfield, which he attended from 1949 to 1951. He then went to Supermarine, then famous as the home of the Spitfire of Battle of Britain fame, where he worked on aircraft performance, loads and engine performance.

In 1956, Rose had decided that he had gone as far as he could at Supermarine, and he was frustrated by the state of the British aircraft industry. After reading in the paper about Avro Canada, which was building jet interceptors for the Canadian government at their plant near Toronto, Rose crossed the Atlantic early in 1957 with his wife Leila and their two sons.

During his 23 months at Avro Canada, he worked as an aerodynamicist on the CF-100 and the CF-105 Avro Arrow jet interceptors, and also in flight test and in advanced design. The CF-100 went out of production in 1958, and on February 20, 1959, the Canadian government cancelled the Arrow program, leading to the closure of Avro Canada and the loss of employment for thousands of engineers and skilled workers.

At that time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was in its early months of existence and was looking for talent. Officials from NASA's Space Task Group, which grew into the Johnson Space Center, hired 31 of the top engineers from Avro, including Rose. In the Mercury program that flew America's first astronauts, Rose worked as project engineer on the Little Joe rocket that was used to test the Mercury spacecraft before it was launched atop larger rockets into space. 

Rose also worked on recovery systems for both the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft. During the early 1960s, Rose represented the Flight Operations Directorate in meetings with Apollo spacecraft contractor North American Aviation, and when the Gemini program began flying, he became a key member of the flight operations team headed by Christopher C. Kraft Jr., NASA's first flight director and later the director of the Johnson Space Center.

Rose was an assistant to Kraft and chaired the meetings that  drew up the Flight Operations Plans that guided Gemini and Apollo missions. Every organization involved in the conduct of each flight, including the astronaut crew, were represented at these meetings, where decisions would be made about what would happen in each flight and when it would happen.

"Basically I conceived the idea that in order to get a successful mission from the operations plan, all the players needed to be aware of what everyone else was doing, and making sure that everyone was playing from the same sheet of music," Rose explained. The plans not only affected the spacecraft and its controllers, but also launch teams, the ships and aircraft on station to recover the astronauts, the ground stations, and the trainers for the astronauts and the controllers.

Rose's soft voice and easy smile belied the fact that he was never afraid to stand his ground or make a point in the often contentious process of planning the Apollo flights. "I put him on my staff, and whenever I had a problem, whenever I wanted an answer, whenever I wanted anything done right, I gave it to Rod Rose," Kraft explained. 

"I was never a head nodder," Rose said. "If It needed to be pointed out, I'd point it out."

In addition to his role in facilitating the first prayer broadcast from space, Rose was especially proud of his preparatory work on Apollo 8 because of the short time that was available to plan the historic mission after NASA leaders decided to send it to the moon. For missions like Apollo 8 and the the subsequent lunar landing missions that passed through the Van Allen radiation belts, Rose also chaired a panel of experts that ensured that the Apollo astronauts were not exposed to dangerous levels of radiation from the Sun. 

In the early years of the Space Shuttle program, Rose continued his work of preparing Flight Operations Plans. Because the shuttle was seen as an operational vehicle, these plans were increasingly standardized. Rose also worked on integrating the shuttle's communications and data systems, and he also represented the Flight Operations Directorate in discussions with U.S. Air Force range safety officers.

Rose retired from NASA in 1984, and after working for Rockwell for five years, he and Leila retired to Wimberley in the Texas Hill Country, although they returned to the Houston area as Rose's health declined.

Rose became a U.S. citizen in 1964, but he was always proud of his British heritage, and he was known as the unofficial historian of the group of engineers who came to NASA from Avro Canada.

Book Review: An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

By Chris Hadfield

Random House Canada

The top Canadian space story of 2013 was without a doubt Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's stint as  commander of the International Space Station. The fact that Hadfield was the first Canadian and only the second person from outside Russia or the United States to hold the prestigious command only begins to explain his prominence over the past year.

During his five months on board the ISS, Hadfield used social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube to take earthbound humans along with him for his third voyage into space, and he used them to far greater effect than anyone who had preceded him into space. Hadfield has gained more than a million followers on Twitter, and his weightless video version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" has been viewed more than 20 million times on YouTube. His fame has spread far beyond Canada's borders.

The native of Sarnia, Ontario, returned to Earth in May and soon hung up his spacesuit. Last fall he produced his first book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.

Nine Canadians have rocketed into space, but before Hadfield, Roberta Bondar was the only Canadian astronaut who had written a book about her experiences with her 1994 book, Touching the Earth.

Hadfield's book adds to the already rich body of astronaut autobiographies, most of them written by American astronauts who flew during the early human space programs of the 1960s. A few American shuttle astronauts and Russian cosmonauts have also produced autobiographies.

So Hadfield set out to produce something a little different, as suggested in the title of his book and in the subtitle used in non-Canadian editions: What Going into Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination and Being Prepared for Anything. 

The book is a relatively compact version of Hadfield's life story, organized around his views of what it took to succeed as an astronaut. The result is a captivating view of astronaut life in the two most recent decades of human space exploration.

After a career in the Canadian military as a fighter pilot, Hadfield joined the Canadian astronaut team in 1992 just as the competition between the U.S. and Russia in space was giving way to cooperation, a change that would shape his career in space.

In his first flight aboard the shuttle Atlantis in 1995, Hadfield was part of the second shuttle crew to dock with the Russian space station Mir. On his second flight aboard the shuttle Endeavour in 2001, Hadfield became the first Canadian to walk in space as he helped install Canadarm2 on board the International Space Station. Years of training in Canada, the U.S. and Russia to prepare for a long duration flight to the station were rewarded when Hadfield was tapped to command the ISS on Expedition 35. 

In common with other astronaut biographies, Hadfield recounts these highlights and takes the readers along for launches, his historic spacewalk, and re-entries. But he also talks about many of the less agreeable aspects of astronaut life, including repairing toilets, dealing with stultifying bureaucracy, and heart stopping moments when his life was in danger due to unexpected and unglamorous problems.

In his book, Hadfield emphasizes the importance of preparation for every eventuality, including worst case scenarios, and of "sweating the small stuff," explaining how a lack of preparation or study for even the smallest matters can put one's life in danger in high performance aircraft and in space. His points are driven home with stories from his own life, including how he nearly missed becoming a military pilot due to lack of preparation for a flight, and the time he almost lost his mission to command the ISS because of a minor medical problem.

Even someone as talented as Hadfield required a huge amount of work, sacrifice and self-discipline to reach the heights of his rarefied profession. And he drives home the importance of humility, something one learns immediately upon joining the ranks of astronauts, and keeps learning, especially if one wants to have a long career in the astronaut corps.

For anyone with a passing interest in space travel, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth provides interesting and valuable glimpses into the lives of today's astronauts, who still face the great dangers of space despite toiling in relative obscurity. Even those who are familiar with space travel will learn from Hadfield's book, since few people who have flown in recent years have written about their experiences. His descriptions of flying to and from the ISS on the Russian Soyuz ferry craft were of particular interest to me.

And how did Hadfield become a social media sensation? As he outlines in his book, much of the credit goes to his son Evan, "the communications guru in our family, savvy about the media in general and social media in particular."  Hadfield produced memorable images in space with encouragement from his son, who took those photos and descriptions of life in space, and used them to produce the tweets, postings, videos and sound files, and finally, Hadfield's unforgettable version of  "Space Oddity." 

Space travel is a team enterprise, and even Chris Hadfield's individual success was a team effort. Not a bad lesson about life.

Jetsons Prove the Future Isn't What It Used to Be

Originally published October 7, 2010, in the Victoria Times Colonist

Do historians always look at the past? Not always. Some historians conduct research on how conceptions of the future have changed over time.

If that doesn’t make sense, think about the common observation that the future isn't what it used to be. That's where historians come in, to ask how it changed and why.

There are many ways to look at how the future has changed, and last week at the annual conference of the Society for the History of Technology in Tacoma, Washington, University of Texas historian Laura Jacquelyn Simmons analyzed the case of The Jetsons, the 1960s cartoon show that featured a family living an automated life in 2062.

The head of the family, George Jetson, pushed buttons at Spacely Space Sprockets and was the sole breadwinner for his wife Jane, teenage daughter Judy and younger son Elroy, their dog Astro and robot maid Rosie.

The Jetsons' flying cars and space needle architecture never came to pass. But George Jetson was subject to constant and capricious surveillance by his boss, something that has come true for many harried workers. And Jane Jetson still found it a challenge to feed her family, even with a push-button pantry.

While many of the changes portended by The Jetsons didn't become reality, the series depicted gender and family roles that are now outdated. And it missed many other changes that were never envisioned back in the 1960s.

Take this article for example. It was written on a personal laptop computer that has arisen instead of the widely anticipated mainframe computers like 2001's Hal. This article was commissioned online in response to a posting I made on the popular social networking website Facebook, whose popularity few would have predicted even a decade ago. Anyone anywhere with internet connections can read this article today, not just those who get the Times Colonist delivered to their doorsteps.

So why do technologies advance in unexpected directions? That's why historians and other social scientists such as sociologists study technology.

Historians are no better than anyone else at making predictions, but they do look for common threads and forces that drive change, be they political, social, economic or technological, that might help point the way for emerging technological systems.

Think of the arguments regularly featured on the pages of the Times Colonist about our transportation infrastructure, which is a big and expensive technological system. Why is there is a “bridge to nowhere” in Langford, an airport overpass under construction, but nothing to relieve congestion on Highway 1 at Mackenzie? These topics generate many arguments, including historical ones.

And historians of technology do look into the past to see how technologies helped turn historical events. David Zimmerman, a military historian at the University of Victoria, told the Tacoma conference about new ideas on the impact of tanks, trucks and machine guns in World War I.

My own historical research deals with the history of space exploration, a key part of the future envisioned in The Jetsons. Back in the 1960s, many people looked forward to seeing astronauts on Mars before the end of the twentieth century, but in fact no one has ventured beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, and only robot vehicles have explored Mars and the other planets and moons of our solar system. Humans on Mars seem as distant today as they did back in the days of the Apollo moon landings.

A couple of reasons for the dashed dreams of space cadets came up during the presentation on The Jetsons. The original series only ran one season, because it was not especially popular, and indeed historians have found that the space program of the 1960s was not really that popular either. Why? One member of the audience at the Jetsons presentation observed that she hated The Jetsons because the series envisioned lives totally divorced from the Earth – a future apparently without forests, gardens or nature. Environmentalism, amongst other things, has trumped space travel.

Yet The Jetsons television show was revived in the 1980s, and the Jetsons themselves remain popular cultural characters. Astronauts still rocket into space, and the dream of trips to Mars has not died. Many chapters remain to be written on the history of the future.