Chris Hadfield (1) (1959–)

What an extremely good outreach everyman the space program got in Chris Hadfield!

His affability belies the single-mindedness required of his job. Yet it's clear that the job also requires a lot of open-mindedness on his part to remain (or seem to) so accepting of how he could've "failed" his boyhood dream. This is the epitome of that proverb of reaching for the stars because even if you don't get there, you might get to go to the ISS anyway.

I appreciated that Hadfield acknowledged the show more sacrifices and support of his family in pursuit of his high pressure dream. And him realising that him being away so often is no excuse for not making an effort in everyday life and other people's special events. And really also his wife for being so sensible and independent. It really takes an entire village in this instance for one man to to achieve the dream of millions.

One more thing I appreciated is Hadfield outlining how he had to meet some space-affiliated person in a hotel lobby but they decided that it'd be better to go to their hotel room and Hadfield acquiesced, but also recognising how potentially uncomfortable it would have been if he were a woman.

Hadfield writes simply and engagingly, and does not waste the valuable currency that is everyone's interest in living in zero gravity. At once glamorising but also down-to-earth, the occupation of astronaut is laid out for an everyperson to judge, and perhaps for an everychild to aspire to. A great addition to outreach in science and space exploration in particular. show less

After Homer Hickam's excursion into fiction, I was a bit leery of NASA guys writing fiction. I now regret this, having waited too long to read Chris Hadfield's space thriller. Can't call it a mystery because the chief suspect is just so obvious from the get-go (once you know the first death is a murder; no thanks to the title for that spoiler), but the story is, literally, a wild ride and I enjoyed it greatly. The reviewers seem to break down into two groups: the people who think all the show more how-space-flight-works verbiage is tedious and the space geeks who think it's the best thing ever. I'm firmly in the second group. None of the NASA press releases ever told us how the first-stage engines are ice coated because the liquid oxygen is so cold they frost over in the Florida humidity, but that detail and a hundred others give verisimilitude to the narrative. This is useful when suspension of disbelief is necessary (at more than one point, the mission really should have been aborted; you have to think, well somebody wants one last Apollo mission and the spy info badly enough to be willing to gamble with the astronauts' lives -- this definitely includes the astronauts and most of the career NASA guys) and when the spy action stuff begins.

Update 2025: After reading Adam Higginbotham's nonfiction historical narrative entitled Challenger, I now know more than I ever wanted to know about how impatient NASA bureaucrats are all too willing to regard the odds with unwarranted optimism and launch missions which should really be scrubbed. I now think that not aborting a mission that has major problems is not a flight of fantasy on Hadfield's part, but an accurate reflection of the NASA ethos from the earliest days of Apollo right through the Shuttle era. Inside information, in fact, from a man who was there.

A surprising amount of the incredible stuff in the story is factual. Chris Hadfield's end notes include the Soviet space station armed with a machine gun that exploded and fell from orbit a few days after launch -- TRUE, and the pistol-packing cosmonauts --TRUE. Space cowboys FTW! Hadfield himself had sidearms training in preparation for flying a Soyuz.

It's really the best kind of historical fiction, seamlessly fitting an Apollo mission that *could* have happened into the matrix of historical events. show less

Tell me a story about an Apollo mission, even a fictional one, and I'm there for it. This book does that and ups the ante by wrapping it in a murder mystery and international intrigue. I already knew Colonel Hadfield could write. Now I know that he can write a thriller that keeps me turning pages. What really shines through for this space geek are all the mission details that made it all seem plausible. Recommended.

Astronaut and Commander of the International Space Station, Canadian Chris Hadfield keeps the reader right there in the moment, whether in the spacecraft or on the moon. Gripping and full of suspense, this is the ultimate adventure with murder thrown in. I had heard this was full of technical details that has put me off reading it for a year, but it turns out this will be one of my favourite books of the year. Those details could only have come from someone who has experienced it all show more himself. He spares no scientific aspect and yet managed to keep my attention without pause.

The Apollo 18 and 19 missions were scrapped because of financial problems so Hadfield used Apollo 18 for his fictional mission of 1973 creating an alternative past and an utterly captivating story. He includes real life characters that also provide an authenticity to this Cold War era novel that details a mission to collect geological samples from the moon and take out Almaz, a Russian spy satellite, on the way. The satellite surprisingly turns out to have cosmonauts aboard (the real one was unmanned) one of whom is able to cling onto Apollo and is successfully brought aboard. Sounds incredible but the feat is taken from real life and Hadfield’s own experiences. A stunning blend of fact and fiction. He obligingly provides an afterword with a summary of elements and characters that were real. show less