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

  • Chris Hadfield
Little, Brown: 2013. 9780316253017 9781447257103 | ISBN: 978-0-3162-5301-7

The third-brightest object in Earth's night sky is the International Space Station (ISS), according to NASA. The station's cultural impact on humanity has perhaps been less brilliant — until this year. From March to May, the tenure of Chris Hadfield as commander of ISS Expedition 35 sparked a worldwide surge of interest in daily life in space.

Chris Hadfield prepares for a mission in 2012. Credit: VICTOR ZELENTSOV/NASA

Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space, charmed hundreds of thousands of followers as he tweeted stunning images of Earth rolling beneath him and the gripping and sometimes bizarre minutiae of his day-to-day schedule. (Take this tweet from 8 May: “Yesterday was so cool: as we tested our Soyuz thrusters we could hear and feel them firing, and how they shook and flexed the whole Station.”) He even managed an inspired zero-gravity rendering of the Bowie classic Space Oddity, complete with guitar. Hadfield brought us a new connectivity with, and understanding of, the work of the ISS crews.

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth describes cogently the core skills that twenty-first-century astronauts need to master — from the unsavoury task of mending the zero-gravity toilet to the challenge of running complex science experiments in orbit. It is clear from the detailed descriptions that working in space remains an enormously complex and routinely dangerous career — Hadfield knew well all seven members of the lost Columbia shuttle crew.

Equally compelling is his analysis of the key behaviours required of the aspiring astronaut. The right person fits in with the human and technical environment with the least disruption; a true team member can embed their own skills and expertise in the single entity that is the ISS crew. Only in this way, Hadfield urges, can the apparently trivial and minor everyday faults of such a massively complex system be prevented from escalating into major, life-threatening incidents.

Hadfield's description of his time on the ISS — and the long, complex pathway that took him there — is detailed, frequently technical, amusingly pragmatic and often self-deprecating. The narrative is far from linear — the highlights and weird events pour out in a torrent, leaving you wishing desperately that you had travelled with him.

An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth is an impressive memoir of Hadfield's part in developing a permanent home for humanity in Earth's orbit. As the title suggests, the book has many important lessons for those of us destined to remain Earthbound — and especially for those seeking to build a new openness for science and technology through public engagement. Every secondary school student should be given a copy: in terms of inspiration, motivation and a sense of belief in the future of humanity in space, this book ranks alongside the accounts published by the Apollo 11 astronauts. I can think of no higher praise.