Anything butan endurance
Endurance Scott Kelly Doubleday €28
Scott Kelly’s teachers might not have guessed he would one day spend a year living on the International Space Station, 400km above the rest of us. By his own account, he wasn’t born ready for the claustrophobic world of space flight: ‘I found it bewildering that some people my age could just sit still, breathing and blinking, for entire school days.’
It took him until his first year at college to decide that he wanted to join Nasa, and the story of how he progressed from a borderline dropout to all-American hero is inspiring.
Kelly’s year in space allowed scientists the chance to see what effect zero gravity has on the human body over the longer term (he had sustained eye damage on a previous mission, for example). In Kelly’s case, there was the added advantage of a control for the experiment: his twin brother, Mark, is also an astronaut.
Endurance is an engaging read, largely because of its fascinating detail and the author’s dry humour: ‘It drives me nuts that our food specialists insist on giving us the same number of chocolate, vanilla and butterscotch puddings, when the laws of physics dictate chocolate will disappear much faster.’ The longest time for an object to go missing on the Space Station before reappearing is eight years, so far. And don’t eat anything that floats past you. It isn’t always food.
The prose is sometimes cliché-ridden, and the editing rather slack. But this is easily forgiven when Kelly describes how he prepared for his time in space by speaking to Alan Gross, who had spent five years in a Cuban prison. ‘He suggested that while I was in space I should count up – count the number of days I had been there – rather than counting down the number of days I had left. It will be easier that way, he said.’