Endurance

Given the opportunity, would you travel to space, even knowing how dangerous it is? (You could burn up on the launch-pad, free fall out of the sky, asphyxiate--all kinds of horrible ways to die!) Would you leave your family behind--including your identical twin--for a year, knowing how hard it is to be away from your family when they need you most (Kelly's sister-in-law Senator Gabby Giffords was shot in the head while he was in space). Would you go to space for a year for the advancement of science, knowing that every day in space is the equivalent of getting 10 x-rays worth of radiation?

 

Scott Kelly started out as a rambunctious kid with bad grades who read "The Right Stuff" and decided to turn his life around and achieved the near-impossible--of making the cut to be a Navy test pilot and become an astronaut. He's just so cool--he has to be! NASA wouldn't send up a bunch of people with nasty personalities to live together in such a small space. He narrates the audiobook himself and I love hearing his inflections as he tells his history-making life story.  I found myself hanging on his every word and every little fact about life in space--the challenges of sleeping, eating, working, etc. while you are floating.

 

Kelly reminds me of how awesome the space program is, how amazing it is that we can strap people to a bomb and send them up through the atmosphere to circle the Earth in orbit, how wonderful for humanity not just the scientific achievement of an international space station is, but the social achievement of bringing people from all over the world together to work on this project.

 

This book reaffirms my respect for the space program, but especially for the astronauts, what they are willing to put their bodies through--the risk, the sacrifice--all for the sake of science and glory.