Record-setting astro tells of struggle
SCOTT KELLY is down to earth.
Kelly, who holds the American record for the longest time in space, recounts his years as an astronaut, in the Navy and growing up in New Jersey in “Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.”
One of famous twin astronauts — his brother Mark married former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) — Scott Kelly commanded the International Space Station on three expeditions.
Yet in this frank memoir, he talks about being a lousy student who probably had ADD or ADHD.
Growing up in West Orange, Scott and Mark were the kind of kids known well in local emergency rooms. At 6, they scaled drainpipes three stories high to wave to their parents — both of them local cops. Their mom was the first woman to become an officer in the town’s history.
“If you were doing something safe, something you knew could be done, you were wasting time,” he writes. “I found it bewildering that some people my age could just sit still, breathing and blinking for entire school days.”
It wasn’t until high school that Kelly found something he excelled at, volunteering as an EMT. He loved it and worked his way up to a full-time job.
But Kelly’s inability to focus led him to apply to the wrong college, where he scraped by.
Like most people his age, the now 53-year-old remembers his parents plopping him in front of the TV to watch grainy images on July 21, 1969, when Neil Armstrong took those first steps on the moon.
For a hyper kid seeking adventures, oddly, it was a book that put him on the path out of this world.
It happened in college when he read Tom Wolfe’s “The Right Stuff” and knew he wanted to be an astronaut.
After landing at NASA, and just before returning to Earth from one mission, Kelly called Wolfe from space.
“We agree to have lunch when I’m back on Earth,” he writes, “and that’s now one of the things I’m looking forward to most.”
Reading Wolfe’s book, Kelly realized that just skating by in school would not do. He wanted to be a Navy test pilot and an astronaut so he needed better grades, particularly in math and hard sciences. All of this seemed unlikely. Then he looked to his mother, pioneer of the West Orange police force. She trained so hard to make it, and his dad helped by building a wall in the backyard and making it higher as she practiced scaling it - the one exercise that often did in male hopefuls.
Kelly took a page from his Navy test pilot, but the odds were mom and constantly set goals. He always against him. Only about a makes no bones about how nothing fifth of those who start flight came easily to him. Though school make it to jet squadrons. mechanically minded, he needed After graduating from SUNY to work hard to excel academically. Maritime College in the Bronx, Kelly eventually served 25 years
He liked to have a good time. with the Navy and retired as a Invited to a party one night, he captain. In 1990, he was assigned called his brother and asked him to a fighter squadron, VFA-143, to come along. Mark, clearly known as the Pukin’ Dogs. more levelheaded, told Scott that “Being in an F-14 squadron in he could not take off and drink — the 1990s was like a cross between either study or give up his playing a professional dreams. sport and being in a rock and roll
Scott was determined to be a band,” he confides.
“The movie ‘Top Gun’ didn’t quite capture the arrogance and bravado of the pilots. The level of drunkenness and debauchery was unbelievable (and is, thankfully, no longer the standard).”
There’s a sense of fun that comes through. How many people would take a gorilla suit into space? Mark sent it to him and Scott relished the chance to scare his colleagues, many of them Russian and unfamiliar with the need for a prankster to wear a gorilla suit.
Kelly makes a point of staying clear of the political fray other than to say he did vote from space, which pretty much blows away any excuse anyone else conjures up for not voting.
And he was clearly excited when former President Barack Obama invited him to the 2016 State of the Union address.
Working so closely with astronauts from all over the world — it is, after all, the International Space Station — and training and launching from Russia gave Kelly insights into different people.
“I’m often asked how well we get along with the Russians, and people never quite seem to believe me when I say there are no issues,” he writes.
“People from our countries encounter cultural misunderstandings every day: to Americans, Russians can at first seem stony and unfriendly, while to Russians, Americans at first come across as naïve and weak. But we who have chosen to live in this space station together, to trust