Fresh off a musical performance that was literally out of this world, International Space Station commander Chris Hadfield has warned that future space missions won’t be rushed just to keep the public excited.

As we’ve covered earlier, this week marks the end of Hadfield’s six month trip to the ISS, during which he kept us all entertained with frequent tweet updates including some spectacular “aerial” photographs and a mindblowing performance of David Bowie’s Space Oddity.

Speaking to the BBC, Hadfield rejected the idea that the cancellation of the NASA program and the dropping of targets for further lunar and Mars trips should be reasons to be gloomy.

Instead he insisted that mankind will return to the Moon and one day visit Mars, but said media pressures wouldn’t determine the timescale:

 …we’re not going to do it because it titillates the nerve endings. We’re going to do it because it’s a natural human progression. It’s a process – we’re not trying to make a front page every day and we’re not planning on planting a flag every time we launch. That’s just a false expectation of low-attention-span consumerism…  it takes patience and it takes tenacity – and we’re going to do it.

Hadfield also explained that we shouldn’t judge the importance of the International Space Station by the fact that it is “only” 250 miles from Earth and then looking how close that is compared to the Moon and beyond. He said that being so close was vital while we are still learning so much about how humans can live in space, and that at this stage it’s important we can bring staff and equipment back quickly if any mistakes are made.