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In Flight USA Articles
Interview With Astronaut, Chris Hadfield
By Shanon Kern
The following is an interview by In Flight USA reporter, Shanon Kern, with astronaut and author, Chris Hadfield. Chris started in general aviation at age 16 and has flown nearly every aircraft available. He currently has a book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life, on the New York Times Bestseller List.
SK: Over the last couple of years, you’ve kind of given the world a front-row view of space and what it’s like to be an astronaut. What made you decide to put everything out on social media?
CH: I served as an astronaut for 21 years. I’ve always felt that a really vital part of the job was to share the experience, not to keep it to myself. So, through the whole 21 years, I used all the technology I could think of to share it. I used ham radio. I used Castle Blends 70 mm film and Imax movies. I spoke in thousands of places in person, but it wasn’t until my third space flight that social media was invented. That was when we had connectivity. The space station is not the best place all the time, but it has Internet connectivity. So you could take a picture and often within a few minutes share it with the world, so it was really just a continuation of what I’d been doing for 20 years, and I was doing my absolute best to use the technology that existed to share a really rare human experience. It’s just been amazing to see the result of that work.
World Remembers Neil Armstrong: One Small Step… For All Mankind
Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, died on Saturday, Aug. 25, following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures.
Editorial: A Fly-By for Neil
By Ed Downs
Regular readers of In Flight USA may have picked up on the fact that editorial opinions and the fun of connecting flying with space sciences come from the unsettled mind of a single person, this writer. It was planned to follow our standard two-topic format in September. But history intervened to change those plans. A remarkable person, test pilot and astronaut passed away, and those who remember when this country was proud of its scientific accomplishments took a moment to reflect. Neil Armstrong is gone. The passing of this great American connects opinion, feelings, flying and science together in a way that warrants that only one story should be written this time. Please know that the staff of In Flight USA, plus every aviator and astronomer I know extends their most heart felt sympathies and condolences to Neil’s family and friends, for their loss is unspeakable. Indeed, God speed, Neil.
This writer was in his hotel room after a long day of teaching a Flight Instructor Refresher Clinic, tired and sore from standing for more than 10 hours. But the evening was not over. Research was needed to confirm some facts and numbers before continuing with this month Skies to Stars column. With a cross country planned to the Moon, it was time to fire up the computer, unfurl a detailed Moon map, and consider how I would locate my destination, the Apollo 11 landing site. The quest for data clarification started with a search engine entry regarding Apollo 11 technical information, but I was stopped cold in my tracks. Almost every search link connected to some comment about the passing of Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11 and the first man to set foot on the moon. This was the first I had heard of this news. I fired up the TV and confirmed that a person I had never met, but considered a friend and mentor, was gone. An era was at an end, like so many “eras” of scientific adventure and courage that have come to an end in recent times.