Live your legacy, says astronaut
David Williams talks about his life and experiences in space in his new book
David Williams has seen the Earth from the depths of space and its oceans as a Canadian astronaut and aquanaut.
But it was during a spacewalk where the Saskatoon native had a number of epiphanies about the spinning blue planet below him.
“When you fly in space and go outside …. it’s truly remarkable because you look down at the planet and you realize a couple of things. There are no borders, no lines separating the countries that we can see from space,” Williams, also a medical doctor, said Tuesday night at the Canadian Authors Series in Port Colborne.
He was the third author in the series this season and spoke about his experiences as an astronaut and his life, both of which can be found in his new book Defying Limits — Lessons From The Edge Of The Universe.
“This whole construct of countries and regional determination of geography is based on how we as humans have evolved on Earth and how we claimed territories. When you fly in space, and don’t get me wrong, I’m a very, very proud Canadian, you become human first.”
Williams said no matter what nation an astronaut is from, when they head into space they are representing humanity. And humanity, he said, has to figure out how to work together on Earth as well as it does in space.
He said the International Space Station is a great example of all of the spacefaring nations coming together and overcoming many challenges.
Though born out west, Williams was raised in Montreal and that’s where he told his parents he wanted to become an astronaut. It was just 11 days shy of his seventh birthday when he watched astronaut Alan Shepard launch on the first American suborbital flight on May 5, 1961.
“I said to my parents that I wanted to be an astronaut … they said it was impossible. In those days we didn’t have a space program that involved humans. I thought that if I couldn’t go to space, I’d live and work underwater.”
At age 12, thanks to negotiations carried out by his father, Williams learned to scuba dive. He was the youngest in his class.
“What was ironic was that I flew in space before I became an aquanaut,” he said, adding that came in 2001.
Before becoming an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency, Williams was an emergency room physician, having graduated from McGill University.
He was one of only four Canadians, out of the 5,330 that applied in 1992, to be selected for the program. Fellow astronauts selected included Chris Hadfield, Julie Payette (Canada’s current Governor General) and Robert Stewart, who later withdrew from the program.
“I was very fortunate,” said Williams.
Of the more than 5,000 people that applied, the authors series audience heard that 600 were children less than 10 years of age, much like he was when he saw that first space flight on TV.
On his first flight in 1998 on board the space shuttle Columbia (which would later be destroyed reentering the atmosphere) Williams carried out neuroscience work.
“I looked at how the brain and nervous system adapted to space,” he said.
The flight was 16 days in length, a long duration at the time when most were five to seven days.
His second mission saw him work on the International Space Station and walk for a second time outside the shuttle as he replaced a faulty gyroscope on the station’s exterior.
That walk saw him attached to the Canadarm, first used in the space shuttle program. There’s also a Canadarm on the space station.
“At the end of my second spacewalk I was riding on that Canadarm … and when I came inside one of the astronauts came up to me and gave me a big hug and said ‘Oh Dave, great spacewalk,’ and then he went on to say ‘We in the international program truly understand the space station is just the base for the Canadarm’,” Williams said.
That arm is on the $5 bill and metaphorically represents all of the technology that has been developed in Canada because of it and the space program, Williams said. The astronaut on the bill, he added, represents all those who have been to space and those who want to go to space.
Canada, he told the almost packed theatre at Roselawn Centre, is a nation with a long space history.
“The first person to describe the principles of modern space flight was William Leitch of Queen’s University in 1861, prior to Jules Verne’s novel From Earth to the Moon.”