Recorded on 6 June 2019 on the Quayside Room Balcony, Museum of Contemporary Arts, overlooking Circular Quay, Sydney, courtesy of AMP Amplify 2019. (Apologies for the challenging audio conditions and resulting quality - full transcript below)

Welcome to the Cyber Security Weekly Podcast (https://australiancybersecuritymagazine.com.au/interview-with-renowned-canadian-astronaut-colonel-chris-hadfield-cybersecurity-in-space-and-future-of-space-exploration/) and recording on a beautiful sunny morning in Sydney. My name is Chris Cubbage (‘CC’) and we are joined by a very special guest, as part of the AMP Amplify 2019 Forum, and our special guest is Canadian astronaut and now the custodian of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo), Colonel Chris Hadfield (‘CH’). Chris thanks for joining us.

CH: A beautiful Sydney morning here Chris, thanks.

CC: You've been to Sydney many times and you've flown over Sydney thousands of times I'm sure. You gave a keynote session to close AMP Amplify yesterday afternoon, speaking to about 150 people. It's an inspiring and awesome session and you received a standing ovation at the end. I'm sure you get that around the world?

CH: It's a huge compliment. Having been off the earth three times. That's about half a year on board a spaceship, gives you time to contemplate and think about the variety of life on Earth but also the commonality of life on Earth. And as far as we can tell, the absolute, unique preciousness of it. So, to come to Sydney and talk, essentially to a bunch of strangers, about ideas and about possibilities and have them honour me by standing up and applause at the end, it’s a wonderful privilege.

CC: Well you mentioned there's ten thousand ideas bolted together on the Space Shuttle and the launch, and those types of things. For our audience which is predominately cybersecurity technology, you spent many months on the International Space Station. There's a lot of activity in Australia around the new space agency. We're seeing the militarisation of space. But one of the things I wanted to capture from your session yesterday. You're dealing in that advanced tech environment and you talk about leadership, team building and ultimately, again linking it back to cybersecurity, is preparing for failure. The inevitable aspect of failure. Just your thoughts around that first and then certainly we'll grab your ideas and experiences in cyber security and space.

CH: You know Chris I think it's even more than the inevitability of failure, it's the necessity of failure.

If you want to tiptoe around everything and never have anything go wrong. It's almost impossible to accomplish anything. You have to not only accept the fact that things are going to fail, things are going to go wrong, but eagerly look for it. Try and push your system under as safe and early, as circumstances possibly can, to the point of failure. It's why we do non-destructive testing. But we often, when things get expensive enough or complex enough, we sort of stop thinking of the necessity for failure and instead try and cross our fingers and hope for perfection. And just because we're hoping and crossing, doesn't mean that's going to happen.

There's been an enormous change in space exploration over the last 15 years as a result of shifting that mindset. Of going from the way that the governments have traditionally approached space travel,