Review: An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield

The word “inspirational” gets tossed around a lot, but it’s hard to read this and not feel inspired. The book starts a bit slow, focusing on Hadfield’s early life and training, but the training gradually becomes more and more intense, and then next thing you know, he’s on the launch pad, and the book, well, it takes off. Some of the highlights for me:

• The training astronauts go through is extraordinary. They prepare for EVERYTHING, go through every contingency, debrief after every simulation (and especially every “failure”), assemble everything they’ve learned across generations of astronauts into a “flight rules” book with detailed scenario walkthroughs, and practice these scenarios over and over and over again. They learn an incredible breadth of abilities, from flying, to physics, to chemistry, to biology, to wilderness survival, and so much more. And they do this for years, with only a faint hope of being one of the lucky few who is chosen to go to outer space and put these skills to use. I can’t do it any justice; just read the book to get a sense of what it really takes to be an astronaut.

• Reading this, you realize that, even if you’ve dreamt about being an astronaut your whole life, the truth is, you don’t actually want to be an astronaut. The amount of training. The constant awareness of the high risks involved and very real chance of dying. The G forces and the very real chance of shitting yourself. The nausea your first days/weeks in space. The always puffy face and constant congestion. The total lack of privacy. The cramped quarters. The inability to properly shower or wash clothes. The intense stress and pressure to not screw up, waste years of effort, billions of dollars, and get people killed.

• I love the part where Hadfield describes the preparation for launch. The trip to Baikonur. The quarantine. The parties. The backup crew on a separate bus. The traditions and superstitions, like watching specific movies, peeing on specific things, etc. Gearing up. Cramming into the shuttle / capsule.

• The description of life aboard the ISS is even better. Learning what the day to day schedule is like, how they work with crews from other countries, how they eat (and what they eat), exercise (treadmills and vacuum-resistance machines), sleep (in private tubes!), and take care of hygiene and basic bodily needs (this sounds awful), the experiments they run, the views of earth from above, the amount of time it takes to prepare for a space walk, the maintenance they have to constantly do. The story of fixing the ammonia leak is intense!

• The story of the insane re-entry procedure of the Soyuz is… something else. The crazy G forces, the ablative heat shield to resist air friction, the crazy crash at the end (with the specially molded seats that prevent your back from breaking on impact)… And then the months of recovery once you’ve returned from living in zero G’s to life on earth (the constant weakness, nausea, foot pain, brittleness of bones, dizziness due to arteries/veins not working as well as they need to, etc). We take for granted what the body does to allow you to live in a gravity well.

The writing in the book is a bit mechanical, for lack of a better term, and combined with the slow intro to the book, it’s a little hard to get into, but trust me, it’s worth sticking with it. The content here is amazing and it makes you appreciate what an accomplishment it is that we have been able to get humans into outer space (and back home!).

As always, I’ve saved a few of my favorite quotes from the book:

“If the only thing you really enjoyed was whipping around Earth in a spaceship, you’d hate being an astronaut. The ratio of prep time to time on orbit is many months: single day in space. You train for a few years, minimum, before you’re even assigned to a space mission; training for a specific mission then takes between two and four years, and is much more intensive and rigorous than general training. You practice tricky, repetitive tasks as well as highly challenging ones to the point of exhaustion, and you’re away from home more than half the time. If you don’t love the job, that time will not fly. Nor will the months after a flight, when you’re recovering, undergoing medical testing and debriefing on all kinds of technical and scientific details. Nor will the years of regular training between missions, when you’re recertifying and learning new skills, while helping other astronauts get ready for their flights. If you viewed training as a dreary chore, not only would you be unhappy every day, but your sense of self-worth and professional purpose would be shattered if you were scrubbed from a mission—or never got one.”

“It’s almost comical that astronauts are stereotyped as daredevils and cowboys. As a rule, we’re highly methodical and detail-oriented. Our passion isn’t for thrills but for the grindstone, and pressing our noses to it. We have to: we’re responsible for equipment that has cost taxpayers many millions of dollars, and the best insurance policy we have on our lives is our own dedication to training. Studying, simulating, practicing until responses become automatic—astronauts don’t do all this only to fulfill NASA’s requirements. Training is something we do to reduce the odds that we’ll die. Sometimes, as with Challenger and Columbia, a vehicle fails and there’s absolutely nothing the crew can do. But sometimes there is. Astronauts have survived fires on the launch pad and in space, ballistic landings where the Soyuz has come back through the atmosphere like a rock hurled from space—even a collision that punctured a spacecraft and caused sudden depressurization. In a real crisis like that, a group hug isn’t going to save you. Your only hope is knowing exactly what to do and being able to do it calmly and quickly.”

“If anything, I’m annoyingly upbeat, at least according to the experts (my family, of course). I tend to expect things will turn out well and they usually do. My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I’m luckier than other mortals, and they sure don’t come from visualizing victory. They’re the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it.”

“In zero gravity, there’s no need for a mattress or pillow; you already feel like you’re resting on a cloud, perfectly supported, so there’s no tossing and turning to find a more comfortable position.”

“A lot of what happens to the human body in space is really similar to what happens during the aging process. In post-flight quarantine, in fact, Tom and I tottered around like two old duffers, getting a preview of what life might be like if we made it to 90. Our blood vessels had hardened; our cardiovascular systems had changed. We had shed calcium and minerals in space, so our bones were weaker; so were our muscles, because for 22 hours a day, they’d encountered no resistance whatsoever.”

Rating: 5 stars