ENDURANCE

5 stars out of 5

Almost every review of this book, I'll bet, will begin something like this: "When I was a kid, outer space was fascinating...I dreamed of being an astronaut." I wholeheartedly agree with the first part; it was true of me then - back in the '50s when the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was founded, and it is true now that I've reached septagenerian status. But beyond that, flying 900 feet in the air under a parasail firmly attached to a heavy cable is about as high as I ever want to go (and don't care to go ever again, thank you very much). Besides that, just thinking about stuffing my body into one of those capsules that carry astronauts to and from terra firma makes me break out in a cold sweat.

Truth is, I'm quite content to read about other people's experiences - and this account is one of the best I've encountered since Tom Wolfe's 1979 classic, The Right Stuff. So I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Wolfe's book served as the impetus that turned Kelly's life around - from a kid who had no plans for his future and didn't much care for education to one singularly focused on a very lofty and difficult-to-reach career goal and knew education was the key to reaching it. 

In this book, Kelly, who holds the American record for consecutive days spent in space, tells it like it really was - both in his personal and professional life. For those who might not know, he is the twin brother of astronaut Mark Kelly, also the husband of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt in 2011. The prologue of the book hooked me immediately: now back on earth for 48 hours, Kelly was suffering the effects of a return to gravity after a year of looking down on civilization as we know it from the International Space Station (which he notes is today the longest-inhabited structure in space by far and the largest peacetime international project in history).

That's impressive in and of itself, but along the way - maybe because I spent my youth in the throes of the Cold War, crossing my fingers that school desks would protect me from a nuclear blast - I was blown away by one comment in particular: That Kelly found himself heading to space with two Russian companions, all of whom not that long ago might have been ordered to kill each other. Now, their very lives depended on total cooperation and trust.

Chapters shift from Kelly's pre-astronaut years to his experiences on four space flights including his final mission aboard the ISS. Although I'm sure he left out plenty of classified details, he pulls no punches when it comes to describing what it's really like in a confined space in zero gravity (right down to how human waste is contained and what happens to any of it that isn't). Some happenings are day-to-day routine and others have the potential to make the writing of this book not a happening thing, but all share a common bond: not a single one is boring. I finished the book as fast as I could, and when I got to the last page, I wished there were more to read. As I said at the beginning, space - and Kelly's part of exploring it - are nothing short of fascinating.

Now that his in-space voyages have come to an end, to Kelly I say thank you for your service and your wonderful book. Oh yes, and one other thing.

Live long and prosper!

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery by Scott Kelly (Knopf, October 2017); 400 pp.