Book: An Astronauts guide to live on earth

This is an autobiography of Christopher Hadfield, a Canadian astronaut that had served as a commander of expedition 35 to the International Space Station.

He is an all around cool dude and he started sharing bits and tidbits about living in space. Hadfield has been described by Forbes as “perhaps the most social media savvy astronaut ever to leave Earth”

His attitude to life is humble and full of wonder. The approach to grueling challenge of trying to become an astronaut and stories about hard-won breaks and unexpected opportunities are good lessons for anyone.

This book is truly inspiring and made me want to meet an astronaut in person.

See on Amazon

Space Oddity

Hadfield recorded space oddity during his stay at ISS

My main takeaways:

• Expeditionary behaviour – when you are locked in with other austronauts / people on a can in the space,
• you really want to do everything that furthers your mission. Doing menial jobs, being positive, volunteering for what needs to be done and not being high maintenance and doing what needs to be done is what furthers common agenda. No place for drama queens. Also, enjoy other people’s success. In new situation, aim to be a 0. Not an amazing input, but first: don’t be a drag.
• You might as well enjoy the journey – chances of actually going to space are very slim. If you put everything on the line, you may be sorely disapointed if you dont make it for some reason. When however, you decide to actually enjoy the steps you take on the path leading you to your goal, you will be more relaxed and more motivated to pursue it. Plus, life will not be hell. All that is also pretty close to “defered life plan” from 4HWW. instead of counting on living during your retirement, you can enjoy life now. For every day in space, astronauts have to train for several months.
• You might as well prepare – Why the hell dont people prepare for what they are trying to do?! Seriously, I don’t know either. Maybe it’s a scout in me ( “Be Prepared” ) , but I really have no idea why people think that being over-prepared is a bad thing. Worst case scenario, you are over-prepared and learned a new skill. When it comes to the whole being an astronaut thing, being prepared is really the only option when you are flying 400km above earth.
• Good thing to point: training is not only practice, it serves as wake-up calls. It’s good to shake up training and think “whats the next thing that will kill me?”
• Enjoy the beauty of life. – Often when astronauts come back to earth they stop to pick up the trash.

Life tips:

• When times get tough, try to distract people and ask them to tell you a story. Story of proposal to their spouse, etc.
• Be prepared for your friends / family. If you are going to be away, plan in advance so that they know you thing about them. make it up to people.

Fun facts

• ISS is actually an enormous laboratory. Each astronaut has plenty of experiments to tend to. They include medicine, robotics, how to ward off osteoporosis. gather data for google maps, etc.
• Yuri Malachenko, during his reentry in soyuz capsule caught fire and changed course. They landed in a kazakh step, setting the field on fire. Once they scrabled from the capsule, the kazakh people had no idea who these aliens are asked them “Where did you come from?” “What about your boat?”. Also they laped into the capsule and startet stealing stuff.

My Kindle highlights

• had to imagine what an astronaut might do if he were 9 years old, then do the exact same thing
• my choices had been making me miserable, I couldn’t have continued. I lack the gene for martyrdom.
• Helene and I set about making this thing the most impressive document ever to emerge from rural Maryland.
• “Okay, what’s the next thing that will kill me?”
• (though let’s face it, you do need a certain amount of intellectual horsepower to be able to fix a toilet).
• It sounds strange, probably, but having a pessimistic view of my own prospects helped me love my job. I’d
• “No one ever accomplished anything great sitting down.”
• Recently, they’ve joked about creating a “Colonel Says” app that would spit out sayings appropriate to any situation.
• why not come prepared?
• focus was always the same: figuring out how to thrive, not just individually but as a group, when you’re far outside your comfort zone.
• Bullying, bickering and competing for dominance are, even in a low-risk situation, excellent ways to destroy morale and diminish productivity.
• I’ve used subsequently as a distraction when the going gets tough: suggesting that one by one, we each describe how we got engaged to our spouses. Everyone liked telling his or her own version. I liked hearing other people’s stories, too,
• The trick to working well with him was to understand that the problems were his, not mine, and they all seemed to stem from his insecurity.
• Over the years I’ve learned that investing in other people’s success doesn’t just make them more likely to enjoy working with me. It also improves my own chances of survival and success.
• focus on the journey, not on arriving at a certain destination. Keep looking to the future, not mourning the past.