Kavi Reads

For anyone who aspired to be an astronaut and joined their training program during the Space Shuttle era in the 90s and early 2000s, it is not uncommon to find out their inspiration was seeing the Apollo 11 moon landing as a child. Scott Kelly was no exception. He saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s touchdown on the Moon along with his twin brother Mark when he was five years old from his home in New Jersey. Both brothers became astronauts in 1996.

However, the moon landing wasn’t Scott’s only inspiration. Starting out as an unfocused, daydreaming college student who did just enough to pass some of his classes, his life turned around when he read Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, a book about why the astronauts accepted the danger of space flight, thus proving that a book can change someone’s life. In his words, reading Wolfe’s book had given him the outline of a life plan he intended to follow. After a career as a naval aviator and then a test pilot, Scott was selected to NASA’s astronaut corps. After a couple successful shuttle missions and an expedition to the ISS, he was selected to be part of NASA’s ISS year-long mission to study the health effects of long-term spaceflight where he and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko spent 342 days onboard the ISS. Kelly describes his experiences in his memoir, Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.

The book is essentially two stores going on at once, told using alternative chapters. It is a combination of his journey and time in the zero-gravity environment in space, along with his story of how he got there from the kid in Jersey watching Apollo 11 on the tele to becoming an Astronaut who spent a total of 520 days in space. While one may think that any adventures in space can easily outshine a narrative of personal development, Scott manages to make both halves of the book just as entertaining to read, with enough humour and self-reflection to keep the reader engaged throughout. In fact, I feel the half about his spaceflight would have felt incomplete without the other half. All the personal stories help him connect to the reader and make the adventurous parts of the book much more engaging.

That is not to say the parts about space were disappointing in any way. Scott describes all aspects of life in space in great detail. He puts just as much life into the mundane but crucial task of fixing the toilet as the more intense spacewalks and the frustrating waits for resupply ships that kept malfunctioning and exploding. And Kelly conveys all this, including his emotions, to the reader candidly. Perhaps the most charming thing about the book is his honesty. He makes it so that there is never a dull moment in the book. His stories of the camaraderie between astronauts from all nations are also wondrous. It is amazing to see how astronauts from all backgrounds can work together, even against protocol at times. He put it perfectly when he said of the ISS’s immense costs, “What is it worth to see two former bitter enemies transform weapons into transport for exploration and the pursuit of scientific knowledge? What is it worth to see former enemy nations turn their warriors into crewmates and lifelong friends? This is impossible to put a dollar figure on“

And he is not the only character in the book. Supporting him in his year-long mission are family, his partner Amiko, his twin brother Mark and daughters Samantha and Charlotte, all of whom feel his absence but have to be supportive nevertheless. Scott has to go through the constant feeling of unease as he knows that in the case of an emergency, he can do absolutely nothing. This was especially unsettling for him as in his last time in space, he got a big blow when his sister-in-law was shot. Along with family, there is also a plethora of astronauts that come and go while he perpetually stays. It’s quite interesting to see him first arrive on the ISS and fumble his way around as he adjusts to the weightless conditions and learns the way of life on the ISS, and then turn into a veteran onboard and help newer astronauts through their first time in space. My favourite part of the book was probably when British astronaut Tim Peake arrived on board. Having read his Ask An Astronaut just a couple weeks prior to this which heavily featured his time on the ISS, it was amusing to read the same story from Scott’s perspective. The funniest part was the first thing Tim did when he arrived, which was eating his fresh Bacon Sandwich. This, while a moment of celebration and happiness for Tim, was almost the opposite for Scott, who had been living off frozen astronaut food for the last few months, and had to hungrily and quietly watch him do it.

The only negative about the book I could think of was that Kelly doesn’t write much about the aftermath of his long-duration spaceflight, beyond a dramatic opening about feeling ill a couple days after landing and waking up swollen limbs (whose cause we never find out). However, the book, overall, was fantastic. And, just like I said at the end of the Ask an Astronaut post, I can’t wait to read a similar book from an astronaut about their experience on the Moon, or even Mars.