Astronaut’s memoir captures adventure-filled life
Two chapters into Scott Parazynski’s new memoir, he’s taken readers close to the peak of Mount Everest, then clinging to the steep face of a Colorado mountain on a climbing adventure gone wrong.
That’s two near-death experiences, and the former NASA astronaut hasn’t even left Earth yet.
Parazynski, who lives in Houston, is a retired astronaut who made five trips to space, braved two trips up Everest and nearly made the 1988 U.S. Olympic luge team. He has hiked into a volcano, earned a pilot’s license and a medical degree, and logged more time spacewalking than almost anyone else.
“I don’t consider myself really a risk taker, which may surprise you,” he said. “I like to think of myself as a risk manager. I think you can go into harm’s way relatively safely.”
Parazynski will sign copies of his book, “The Sky Below,” in Houston this week. It’s the story of a remarkable life full of adventure on Earth and beyond.
Parazynski, 56, grew up building model rockets with his dad in the space-race ’60s, when NASA was striving to get astronauts to the moon. From an early age, he dreamed of becoming one of those astronauts — but he never told people about it because NASA seemed like “such a faraway, lofty goal.”
“When I was a kid, everyone on my block wanted to become astronauts, too,” he said. “Of course, I never grew out of it.”
Parazynski knows firsthand what a risk each mission can be. He lost friends when the Columbia shuttle exploded over Texas in 2003. And each time he headed into orbit himself, he’d write farewell cards to his family, knowing something catastrophic could happen and he’d never return.
But there’s been more to Parazynski’s life than space. He’s spent his life seeking adventure on Earth, too. As a kid, he traveled the world with his parents, living in Dakar, Beirut, Tehran and Athens. He grew up to be an adventurous athlete and a daring mountain climber.
In 2008, he took out a $40,000 home-equity loan to travel to the Himilayas and conquer Everest — and then a ruptured disc in his back forced him to turn around at 24,500 feet. But Parazynski didn’t give up.
“I realized that it wasn’t going to evaporate from my ambitions and dreams — it was still something that was burning in my desire to accomplish,” he said. The next year, he faced Everest all over again and made it to the top.
Parazynski’s not done with adventure, but he has left his space days behind. That’s why he decided to write a memoir.
“I had so many crazy life stories that a lot of my family and friends insisted needed to be told,” he said. “I started probably five years ago to put some of them down on paper. I had no idea how enormously difficult writing a book would be.”
Parazynski credits his collaborator, writer Susy Flory, for the book’s intense level of detail. He has a few journals from his mountain expeditions and some notes he jotted down after NASA missions — but Flory got him to remember what really mattered.
“‘What did it really look like, feel like, smell like? What was going through your head?’ She kind of grilled me,” he said. “I teased her (that) she could have been a psychiatrist in her other life — she’s so probing in her questions, it made me peel back onion layers.”
These days, Parazynski is the CEO of a tech startup that is developing a way to fly drones with what he calls a “fancy joystick.” But there’s a bigger long-term goal.
“We allow drone operators to fly like gamers and not like pilots,” he said. “Those same kinds of controls will one day allow a surgeon in Houston to operate (on a patient in) sub-Saharan Africa.”
And he still hopes NASA will be able to send astronauts back to the moon — and eventually to Mars.
When Parazynski speaks at to school kids, he likes to tell them: “I firmly believe the first Martians have already been born. They’re on the surface of the Earth. They’re already going to school — maybe even in this room.”
“That gets them excited,” he said. “But I believe it’s true. … Colonizing Mars is, I think, an achievable goal.”