Canadian astronaut says human space travel will advance ‘sooner than you think’

Canadian astronaut Col. Chris Hadfield (Ret.) on Friday said that human travel to space will happen sooner than we think, adding that the first destination will likely be a return trip to the moon. 

“Sooner thank you think,” Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space, told Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton and Krystal Ball on “Rising” when asked when human space travel will expand. 

“The technology is good enough now that it’s not hugely an impediment to being able to do this. This is coming down with the new work that Elon Musk and SpaceX have done, what Jeff Bezos is doing with Blue Origin. They are looking for ways to make space flights cheaper, and simpler, and therefore safer,” he continued. “If you can do those things, it opens it up to being a business for all different types of applications, unmanned and manned.” 

Hadfield’s comments come one day after an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut made an emergency landing after the Russian Soyuz rocket they were using to travel to the International Space Station malfunctioned. 

The Canadian astronaut said space travel needs to be perfected to avoid Thursday’s mistake before humans begin going on missions to the moon and Mars. 

“The next natural destination is the moon. It’s only three days away, and we have a lot of stuff to get right. We’re going to make mistakes just like we’ve always done, like what happened yesterday,” Hadfield said.  

“You don’t want them to happen on the way to Mars if you can help it because you want to be able to turn around and come back. So I think we’ll spend quite a while trying to figure out how to settle on the moon sort of like we did in Antarctica,” he continued. 

The Trump administration has made U.S. space programs a top priority. 

President Trump earlier this year directed the Pentagon to establish a “space force,” which would make up the sixth U.S. military branch. 

— Julia Manchester