Scott Kelly - Endurance

Like many of my readers (I imagine) I first learned of Scott Kelly when he spoke at NI Week several years ago. I want to say it was pre-pandemic, probably 2018,2019. It was definitely after I became a Champion in 2018 because I remember sitting up front in the Champion's reserved section. It was a great talk about his year in space. I quite enjoyed it. He mentioned a couple books in his talk that I immediately went out and read, notably Endurance and The Right Stuff. Scott mentions both as being an inspiration and even took a copy of Endurance on the Space Station during his year in space. After reading both, I finally got around to reading Scott's book.

After reading Scott's book I feel like I have an idea of what it's like to live in space. I'm sure there is plenty that you just have to experience but the book goes into lots of detail on the day-to-day on the space station. My previous exposure to space exploration came mostly through Sci-Fi which is of course not very realistic in most cases (people like Andy Weir who do a ton of research excluded).

There are a lot of challenges that I just wouldn't have thought of. Things we do every day become a lot more complicated - eating, drinking, using the bathroom. Sleeping was one that I hadn't thought about. Floating around and then waking up in weird places and orientations. There are also a whole bunch of challenges with zero gravity and how it affects your body that I hadn't thought of.

Scott did a really good job of capturing the risk of being up there. I was definitely on edge while reading about the spacewalks. There was also some discussion of Asteroids and other debris passing near the station. Scott also talked about the Challenger Disaster and having to fly one of the shuttles after that.

There are also a lot of mental challenges that Scott captures really well in his book. He talks about all his struggles to even get into the program. He talks about the loneliness, and the fear of getting stranded when a couple of the supply rockets blew up. He goes into detail about dealing with his sister-in-law being shot while he was in space and he couldn't do anything about it. He was also very vulnerable about his relationship with his wife and daughters and the strain caused by his journey.