Chris Hadfield

If you look at world history since the early 1990s, we've had a strange 30 year bubble of peace with the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the wall in Berlin and all that.

It's not our normal behavior.

Our much more normal historical behavior is one of conflict and fear and jealousness over possessions and such that often flame the worst of human behaviors.

But even since the early 90s, we've had lots of bad things happen, the Gulf War and, of course, the huge human conflict and loss of life that's going on at the other end of the Mediterranean and in Ukraine right now.

And when there is conflict and that sense of nationalism and the decrease of optimistic internationalism that began in the early 90s, I think when that happens, you want more good examples, things that people can look up to.

So while all that stuff has been going on, 15 leading nations of the world have found a reason to cooperate peacefully 24 hours, seven days a week for that entire period on the International Space Station.

And even right now, with all of the posturing and saber rattling that's going on, the United States and Russia and all the other partners of the International Space Station are cooperating.

working together every single day, doing scientific research, trying to understand the universe itself, observing our world, and also sharing command of the International Space Station.

Americans launch on the Russian Soyuz rocket like I did.

Russians launch on the American Dragon

and Falcon rockets.

And that cooperation is so visible that anyone in the world can walk out at dawn or dusk.

You just have to go to the NASA site and see when it's going over your house.

But you can go out and watch.

It's the third brightest thing in the sky after the sun and the moon.

Next brightest thing is the International Space Station.

And you can just watch it go over your head from horizon to horizon.

An unmistakable little beacon of...

how we behave when we do things right.

And we need examples like that because we're always going to be messing the other stuff up.