An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, by Chris Hadfield

[sophia_sol]

Chris Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut who got more into the public eye than most astronauts these days due to an active twitter presence during his half-year on the ISS in 2012-2013. This is his memoir!

It's an interesting read, though it doesn't get super personal really. It's mostly just reading a reasonable guy chatting thoughtfully about helpful ways to approach living one's life. Who happens to be a highly-decorated and skilled astronaut, giving anecdotes about spaceflight and stuff.

And it means that my number one take-away from the book is.....what is it LIKE to be that mentally and emotionally stable and healthy????

This is absolutely a trait they select for in astronauts (for good reason!!) and then astronaut training puts a lot of effort into improving these skills too. So it makes sense that Hadfield would exude an aura of "chill competent with-it dude with a brain that doesn't act up." But my gosh. Wouldn't it be NICE.

Now, I'm not saying the guy's perfect or anything, like, you clearly need to have a lot of drive and ambition to become an astronaut, and if you read around the edges of the book you can see that all that drive focused towards reaching his goal put a lot of strain and pressure on his wife and kids. But you get the sense he's aware of the trade-offs he's made and made his choices with full knowledge, and did his best to mitigate the issues wherever he could, and truly listen when people told him there was a problem. And he also comes across as a guy who...would have been genuinely at peace with it if he'd put all this effort into living out his greatest dream and it didn't work out.

WEIRD.

(He's also the kind of person who, at 9 years old, realized he wanted to be an astronaut, realized it was a really really far-fetched goal, and decided that what made the most sense was to approach all of his choices in life based on what someone who would become an astronaut would be doing in that moment, figuring that it would be helpful if it ever became possible for him to reach his goal, but would still be useful to him even if he never became an astronaut. What the fuck.)

Comments

[tei]

I remember reading this! Mostly I remember being impressed by his insistence on the idea that the way you manage to shoot people into space mostly without anyone dying is by being extremely sure that you never make the same mistake twice, and respond to every mistake by ensuring it would be impossible for anything like that to ever happen again.

Also, I remember a story about throwing a snake out of an airplane. Was that from that book?

[sophia_sol]

yeah the space agencies have put a heck of a lot of work into figuring out how to handle mistakes in a really productive way and it's hella impressive!

the story about the snake on the airplane is indeed from this book! Hadfield and another guy are up in the air in a really fast plane, going really fast, and he discovers a black snake in the cockpit with them, so the copilot deals with it by opening the teeny tiny window and yeeting the snake. In extremely cramped conditions, at a speed where opening the window even a little bit basically turns the cockpit experience into a hurricane!

[pauraque]

I've had similar thoughts when reading about astronauts! Obviously in a situation where people are going to be sealed into a tiny compartment hurtling through space at fantastic speeds, you're going to choose the most stable people possible. But you do wonder, where the hell do they find people that stable?!

[sophia_sol]

I KNOW, RIGHT? I mean part of how they find people that stable is that they draw from people in jobs like...test pilots, who also have to be pretty dang stable to have not died already. And they start with an applicant pool in the thousands, to choose a single-digit number of astronauts. But still!

[luzula]

I think at about age nine, I also wanted to become an astronaut. But unlike with him, for me it was a brief phase and I did not thereafter approach my life with this goal...

[sophia_sol]

I know, right? My dream job at age 9 was also not very plausible, and I did literally nothing to make that dream more likely!

[conuly]

(He's also the kind of person who, at 9 years old, realized he wanted to be an astronaut, realized it was a really really far-fetched goal, and decided that what made the most sense was to approach all of his choices in life based on what someone who would become an astronaut would be doing in that moment, figuring that it would be helpful if it ever became possible for him to reach his goal, but would still be useful to him even if he never became an astronaut. What the fuck.)

It seems to have worked for him.

[sophia_sol]

It does! Because he was just that kind of person! incredible.

[silverflight8]

Yeah, he's a pretty cool guy! Of course, there's also editing around the worst parts I'm sure, and like you say he didn't get super personal. What struck me when I read this, though, was his self awareness and the trying to be a good person, which I think some people never even get to the stage of thinking about.

[sophia_sol]

yeah, agreed on everything you say!

[lirazel]

And it means that my number one take-away from the book is.....what is it LIKE to be that mentally and emotionally stable and healthy????

RELATABLE!!!

(He's also the kind of person who, at 9 years old, realized he wanted to be an astronaut, realized it was a really really far-fetched goal, and decided that what made the most sense was to approach all of his choices in life based on what someone who would become an astronaut would be doing in that moment, figuring that it would be helpful if it ever became possible for him to reach his goal, but would still be useful to him even if he never became an astronaut.

Wow. WOW. Not relatable at all! But...it makes sense that he became an astronaut!

[sophia_sol]

yeah that origin story from when he was 9 really just kind of encapsulates the way in which he's the sort of person who could actually become an astronaut! UNLIKE ME.

[chestnut_pod]

Some people just… exist!!

I always wonder, though: it seems like "extremely stable" and "willing, enthusiastic, to be shot on a giant pile of explosives into the merciless void of space" are not. At first glance. Super compatible personality traits. Anyway, humanity!

[sophia_sol]

it seems like "extremely stable" and "willing, enthusiastic, to be shot on a giant pile of explosives into the merciless void of space" are not. At first glance. Super compatible personality traits.

You would think that! And yet Hadfield manages to explain it in a way that makes perfect sense? but that I cannot pull to mind a mere day or two after reading this book, because it just does seem so weird!

I think it's just like....he understands the value to all of humanity that the space program provides, he knows it's something that fits his skills and interests, he knows the space agencies put a lot of work into making sure mistakes don't happen, and then you just have to accept that a certain level of risk is the trade-off for doing this very important thing? He doesn't come across as a thrill-seeker, just willing to do the math on the risk-reward ratio of what space travel can do.