An Astronaut´s Guide to Life on Earth – Hadfield Chris (2021)

Back on Earth after three spaceflights, Chris Hadfield’s captivating memoir reveals extraordinary stories from his life as an astronaut and shows how to make the impossible a reality. This edition contains a new afterword. Colonel Chris Hadfield spends decades training as an astronaut and logs nearly 4,000 hours in space. During this time, he breaks into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposes of a live snake while piloting a plane, is temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft, and becomes a YouTube sensation with his performance of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in space. The secret to his success and survival is an unconventional philosophy he learns at NASA: prepare for the worst and enjoy every moment of it. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration, using eye-opening and entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks and the calm, measured responses required in crises. He explains how conventional wisdom can stand in the way of achievement and happiness, and shares counter-intuitive lessons from his education in space: do not visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff. Readers may never build a robot, pilot a spacecraft, make a music video or perform basic surgery in zero gravity like Colonel Hadfield, but his vivid and refreshing insights teach them how to think like an astronaut and change the way they view life on Earth, especially their own.