An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for AnythingTravel to space and back with astronaut Chris Hadfield's "enthralling" bestseller as your eye-opening guide (Slate). Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. The secret to Col. Hadfield's success-and survival-is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst- and enjoy every moment of it. In An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, Col. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks, and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of achievement — and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counterintuitive lessons: don't visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff. You might never be able to build a robot, pilot a spacecraft, make a music video or perform basic surgery in zero gravity like Col. Hadfield. But his vivid and refreshing insights will teach you how to think like an astronaut, and will change, completely, the way you view life on Earth — especially your own. "Hadfield proves himself to be not only a fierce explorer of the universe, but also a deeply thoughtful explorer of the human condition." —Maria Popova, Brain Pickings |
From inside the book
Page
... flight. I was hooked. Fighter pilots live to fly, but while I love flying, I lived to understand airplanes: why they do certain things, how to make them perform even better. People on the squadron were genuinely puzzled when I said I ...
... flight. I was hooked. Fighter pilots live to fly, but while I love flying, I lived to understand airplanes: why they do certain things, how to make them perform even better. People on the squadron were genuinely puzzled when I said I ...
Page
... flight test centers, like the one in Cold Lake, Alberta, and the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, where I ran into a Canadian test pilot who was there as part of a regular exchange program. This guy casually mentioned that ...
... flight test centers, like the one in Cold Lake, Alberta, and the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, where I ran into a Canadian test pilot who was there as part of a regular exchange program. This guy casually mentioned that ...
Page
... flight test of an external burning hydrogen propulsion engine, an engine that would make a plane fly far faster than the speed of sound. The paper that Sharon Houck, the flight test engineer, and I wrote about our research won The ...
... flight test of an external burning hydrogen propulsion engine, an engine that would make a plane fly far faster than the speed of sound. The paper that Sharon Houck, the flight test engineer, and I wrote about our research won The ...
Page
... flight (he subsequently flew twice more, and is one of only two astronauts who've ever launched to space seven times ... flights would have a safer, easier way to get on board Mir than we did. It was an enormously complicated challenge ...
... flight (he subsequently flew twice more, and is one of only two astronauts who've ever launched to space seven times ... flights would have a safer, easier way to get on board Mir than we did. It was an enormously complicated challenge ...
Page
... flight alone doesn't do the trick. These days, anyone who has deep enough pockets and good enough health can go to space. Space flight participants, commonly known as space tourists, pay between $20 and $40 million each to leave Earth ...
... flight alone doesn't do the trick. These days, anyone who has deep enough pockets and good enough health can go to space. Space flight participants, commonly known as space tourists, pay between $20 and $40 million each to leave Earth ...
Contents
Have an Attitude | |
The Power of Negative Thinking | |
Sweat the Small Stuff | |
The Last People in the World | |
Whats the Next Thing That Could Kill | |
Tranquility Base Kazakhstan | |
Aim to Be a Zero | |
Life off Earth | |
practicalities and logistics of even more ambitious expeditions | |
Square Astronaut Round Hole | |
COMING DOWN TO EARTH | |
Photos | |
Acknowledgments | |
Reading Group Guide | |
Other editions - View all
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About ... Chris Hadfield No preview available - 2015 |
Common terms and phrases
actually airlock astronaut Baikonur Canadarm2 Canadian capcom capsule Chris Cassidy Chris Hadfield commander cosmonauts couldn’t crew crewmates debrief didn’t docking Earth engines Evan everything experience feel felt fighter figure floating going to space gravity ground guitar happen hatch Helene helmet Houston inside International Space Station kids knew landing launch leak look minutes Mission Control module months move NASA NASA’s never orbit Pavel person planet pressure problem pull quarantine re-entry ready robotic rocket ship Roman Roscosmos Russian sense Shuttle simulator sleep sleep station Sokhol someone Soyuz space flight Space Oddity space program spaceship spacesuits spacewalk SpaceX Star City started stuff sure test pilot there’s things took turn undock vehicle wanted wasn’t we’d weightlessness what’s who’d who’s window you’re Yuri zero