Kelly overcame wild youth to become NASA star

one another with our lives, do not experience cultural conflicts.”

All of the astronauts bring personal items into space. Kelly totes a book about famous Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” which he acknowledges with this title.

Kelly recounts how difficult it is to do pretty much anything in space, such as use the toilet. This takes on greater importance than one might think, considering a processor distills urine into drinking water.

No wonder he listed bottled water among the treats he missed most.

With no gravity, even simple tasks become complicated. You can’t put down a utensil while eating. Crumbs don’t fall to the ground to be swept up later.

And more than one astronaut has thought they lucked out with a floating piece of chocolate only to have a rude awakening: The “candy” was droppings from the mice aboard for experiments.

Watching the sunrise every 90 minutes and being given a vantage point of Earth that so few ever see was amazing, Kelly says, but it did not ignite a spiritual path for him. He says he had no epiphanies in space.

What’s most surprising is how tedious a lot of the work is, not unlike a lab on land. Everything has to be measured and done within a system; NASA is all about systems.

As exciting as it is to do a space walk, just putting on the $12 million spacesuit, which weigh 250 pounds on takes hours.

His chapters about being in space begin with summaries of dreams and, like anyone’s, some of his are weird.

On Christmas Eve 2015: “Dreamed I met with General David Petraeus and he was trying to warn me of something. Some kind of trouble I would experience on the flight.”

Kelly shares some very personal information. He realized as he would Earth, was getting married that it was a mistake. He’s open about loving his daughters while feeling distanced from his ex-wife, although he’s careful to praise and thank her in the acknowledgments.

They eventually divorce and he has been living with Amiko Kauderer, who works in public affairs for NASA, for years. By the end of the book, they are engaged.

And by the end, Kelly’s back on Earth, where he found he did have the right stuff.