Astronaut Truths About Life on Planet Earth

 

Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything

–

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: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything, 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.

Get Ready for a total Mind Blowing conversation as Joe Rogan Speaks to Chris Hadfield about everything

[youtube OS0laJvgVxo#t]

---

BOOK REVIEW

–

It’s a guide to life, a guide to space, a guide to parenting, and my favourite book of the year! By Mary Lavers

–
I have so many good things to say about this book I don’t think they’ll all fit into one review (for my full review, including my four-year-old’s reaction to it, please visit my blog, Cozy Little Book Journal). Here’s some of what I thought about the book:
Chris Hadfield knew he wanted to be an astronaut when he was nine years old. In fact, he remembers the exact moment he knew. It was late in the evening on July 20, 1969.
That’s when his entire family, spending the summer in Stag Island, Ontario, “traipsed across the clearing” to their neighbour’s cottage so they could crowd themselves in front of the television and watch the moon landing. “Somehow,” he writes, “we felt as if we were up there with Neil Armstrong, changing the world.”
Hadfield writes about this early experience–and many, many of the other experiences that have led him to become the world’s most recognized astronaut since Armstrong himself–in his new book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth.
I would have read this book a lot faster if I hadn’t kept stopping every few pages to run out to tell my family what I’d just read. Magda didn’t mind. She asked me to read aloud to her from the book every chance I got. At 4, I’d venture to say she knows more about space than most Canadians ten times her age, and we have Colonel Chris Hadfield to thank for that.
His videos from space captured her imagination and mine. Thanks to him, Magda has spent the better part of the year learning everything she can about space exploration and astronauts, and has even composed several songs dedicated to female astronauts she admires (“Julie Payette Rocket” and “You are the Moon, I am the Sun [for Suni Williams]”).
I feel like he’s introduced us to space exploration in a way no one had before, and that he’s introduced us to astronauts as real people. Of course, the internet has helped immensely with that, as has Hadfield’s social media genius of a son, Evan. But thanks to them, our whole family knows names like Tom Marshburn, Roman Romanenko, Karen Nyberg, Kevin Ford and Luca Parmitano. Thanks to him, both my daughter and I have new heroes from all over the world.
And that’s a gift that Chris Hadfield has given to so many of us; he’s renewed our sense of wonder. He’s inspired us to look at space again in a way most of us hadn’t in a long time. He’s inspired us to be passionately curious and unabashedly compassionate. He’s shown us–through his eyes–what exactly it looks like to all be connected in this world (and off it). He’s reminded us what it looks like to be passionate, competent and sincere, without irony or cynicism.
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life really is a guide to life. Actually, it makes a pretty good guide to parenting too. Colonel Hadfield offers an insider’s look into the life of an astronaut and the steps it takes to become one. It’s deeply satisfying for those curious about the past, present and future of the space program, but it’s also full of truly excellent advice for those with ambition in any field.

He writes: “I never thought, ‘If I don’t make it as an astronaut, I’m a failure.’ The script would have changed a lot if, instead, I’d moved up in the military or become a university professor or a commercial test pilot, but the result wouldn’t have been a horror movie.”

I love that. I love the attitude that you don’t have to “wait for your life to begin,” as so many of us do (I know I have). You can start becoming the person you want to be right away, with the choices you make and the steps you take. And, most importantly, do the things that will make you happy along the way, whether or not you reach your end goal. And in fact the “end goal” may change many times but at least you’ll be doing things you love.
Most of the book is filled with fascinating stories about the life of an astronaut, including many that I had never heard before. He relates stories of things that have gone wrong in space, most of which are corrected and managed by the quick thinking of astronauts, cosmonauts and mission control. He talks about the sadness he and his wife felt upon hearing that his good friend Rick Husband had been killed aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia.
He explains the detailed “death plans” that all astronauts make before they go into space, deciding in detail exactly what would happen if they were killed in space (right down to who exactly would tell their family and who would accompany their spouse to the funeral). It’s an inside look into an experience only around 500 people in history have ever had: preparing for and achieving space travel.
I could say so much more about this book but I’m afraid it would just turn into me giving another page-by-page account of everything in it, much like I did with Magda and Mike all week. What I can say is that I was even more inspired by the book than I already was by Colonel Hadfield himself, which is pretty darn inspired.

Purchase an Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything on Amazon.com >>>>

_________________________________

About the Author

Chris Hadfield is one of the most seasoned and accomplished astronauts in the world. In May, Hadfield returned to Earth after serving as Commander of the International Space Station, where he and his crew lived for six months (it was his third trip). The top graduate of the U.S. Air Force test pilot school in 1988 and U.S. Navy test pilot of the year in 1991, Hadfield was selected to be an astronaut in 1992.
He served as Director of NASA Operations in Star City, Russia from 2001-2003, Chief of Robotics at the Johnson Space Center in Houston from 2003-2006 and Chief of International Space Station Operations there from 2006-2008.
The former President of the Association of Space Explorers (2007-2011), Hadfield is also a fully qualified flight engineer cosmonaut, is fluent in Russian, and is designated a “specialist” on all Space Station systems, meaning that he has earned the highest qualification level possible for every imaginable task onboard.

__________________________________