The world’s most famous astronaut ended a thrilling, mind-expanding presentation to a packed New Theatre on Monday with an eloquent tribute to the late David Bowie. The musician, he said, was “fearless in reinvention” – a description which many present felt applied equally to Chris Hadfield.

During the previous 90 minutes we had heard much of his driven, focused career in which a determination for extra-terrestrial exploration, fostered as a three-year-old, was gloriously fulfilled.

The Sky is Not the Limit was the title of his talk, spelt out on the two identical screens filling both sides of the stage. On them were shown startling images of the world – our world – as viewed from the International Space Station where Canadian Chris had three tours of duty, latterly as its Commander.

First, though, came amazing footage of the rocket launch that thrust him up there. It was, he said, like being aboard a giant Roman candle with a 1:38 chance of calamitous failure, the equivalent, he said, of BA losing five planes every day.

In one shot from the Space Station we saw Oxford – “It’s one of those blobs, over to the left of London,” he said.

In another was the amazing multi-coloured Australia, “like a Jackson Pollock picture,” he said. It was obvious that Chris never tired of the magnificence of the views from his cabin window during orbits of the world that occurred once every 92 minutes, with spectacular sunrises and sunsets that never ceased to thrill.

From the windows, nearing the end of one mission, were spotted strange sparks that turned out to be leaking ammonium which, unless dealt with, would lead the craft’s systems to cut out.

The repair involved a hastily planned space walk by two of the six crew, with their space suits exposed to searing heat on one side and unimaginably intense cold on the other.

Chris ended with Bowie’s Space Oddity, with suitably adjusted words: “Planet Earth is blue, and there’s so much more to do.”

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