Industry committee  Mr. Chong and members of the standing committee, it is really exciting for us to be here today and share with you our adventure. The era of human space flight in Canada is now 25 years old. In that period of time eight Canadians, including Marc Garneau, have flown in space on 1

Industry committee  Sorry about that, gentlemen. This is going to be a good morning. The point is that what Canada has done over those 25 years is increase our roles and responsibilities in human space flight, and I also think our international credibility among our partners as well. When we first

Industry committee  I have had the opportunity to fly on both now. The Soyuz vehicle, even though it looks somewhat ancient, is a very smooth trip to space. The only exception would be the staging, when one rocket stage is finished its propellant and the next one kicks in. That's when you get jolted

Industry committee  It's an incredible feeling when you get aboard the station. It seems surreal. It looks similar to the trainers that we trained with in Houston and other countries, but in another perspective, it looks like something out of a Salvador Dali painting. We had several crews visit us

Industry committee  Part of doing an EVA is the necessity to breathe pure oxygen, which denitrogenates our bloodstreams so that we can avoid getting the bends. This is our good friend Nicole Stott going out the airlock on her first EVA. I helped operate the Canadarm2 here, transporting Nicole and th

Industry committee  The HTV vehicle is unique. It has a central unpressurized segment, which contained another pallet inside. I used the Canadarm2 to extract the pallet, which contained a couple more experiments, and then moved it over towards the back porch on the Japanese lab and handed it off to

Industry committee  We transport a lot of cargo when the MPLM or the HTV arrives. This is a new treadmill that arrived and required installation. Legs are useless for locomotion in space. They just float in the breeze behind us, so we use them for transporting cargo instead.

Industry committee  The primary reason for building the space station in the first place was to do world-class medical science and material science. This is one of the medical experiments studying osteoporosis and involves six mice. This is an experiment from York University in Toronto. It's an at

Industry committee  We welcomed a new laboratory rack in our increment, the fluids integrated rack, for doing fluid physics in space. Space is an incredible place to do research because it is an environment where there's no sedimentation, no convection, no diffusion, and no buoyancy. We also do qui

Industry committee  I'll give you the quick tour of the station. It's a huge facility, 85 metres long now, about the same volume as a large passenger jet. This is the Japanese lab. I have the Canadian flag up for doing an education downlink event. This is the Columbus module. It's an incredible la

Industry committee  This is the astronaut training centre in Houston, the Johnson Space Center. If I had a laser pointer, I could show you where I live. Here are the Grand Cayman Islands.

Industry committee  You see some sad things as well. This is an oil field fire. We saw other evidence of human destruction in the environment, which is sad, but also, as Frank mentioned, of scientific importance.

Industry committee  Those of us from Canada and the United States explained what Halloween was to our Russian and European crewmates. If you can remember that, keep the mental image in your mind. I'll tell you a story about it later. It's quite funny.

Industry committee  The only sad moments were when we had to say goodbye to crewmates. The photo shows a green tag on Nicole's back that says she was transfer item number 914. We're transferring over to the shuttle. Frank De Winne and I were preparing to go home. We undocked from the station. As op

Industry committee  That's our family movie.