I took courses in HTML, web publishing and had a short stint as an intern in the Goodreads IT department. This would have done his story far more justice, rather than deliver what feels like a rush job to simply capitalize on his Rock Star status.

I felt at times that I was right alongside Chris in parts of his journey and I listened intently to his wisdom on how to be a person with integrity, humility, determination and a sense of humour. Update There is a PBS documentary, premiered March 2nd, A Year in Space about Scott Kelly's marathon space adventure which just ended.Now a huge, humming, functioning laboratory, the ISS is anything but open-concept; it’s not possible to take in the whole interior at a glance. The majority of the food on board is dehydrated, so again, you just inject hot or cold water directly into the packages using a kind of needle, then cut open the packages and dig in. If you, like me, are not one of the 536 people (November 2013) who have been into space but dreamed of being an astronaut (Poor eyesight blew it for me, at least that's what I tell myself) or wondered what it would be like to be an astronaut then this is about as close as you are going to get. I knew they slept in hanging sleeping bags but I didn't know their arms were free and as they slept their arms would drift up and wave around, along with their hair.

With burning curiosity, I had to check out the YouTube videos of his life on the International Space Station, and they're fascinating. Here we have Hadfield singing David Bowie's "Space Oddity" Please take a few minutes out of your life to watch it. Bullying, bickering and competing for dominance are, even in a low-risk situation, excellent ways to destroy morale and diminish productivity. In An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, Chris gives us a rare insider’s perspective on just what that kind of thinking involves, and how earthbound humans can use it to achieve success and happiness in their lives. Not really - it would have taken too long, but I liistened to it twice a day for a week and loved it.Astronaut Candidates (ASCANs, pronounced exactly as you might imagine) are being evaluated and compared on everything they do - everything - and space flight assignments are based on how well they perform. Instant gratification and shortcuts are preferred over having the experience of undertaking the journey and the satisfaction of having reached the destination through one's diligence and dedication. Hadfield has done more than probably any astronaut since the Apollo missions to transform the image of space exploration .

Hadfield was an incredibly successful fighter pilot and then test pilot, with a degree in mathematical engineering, before being considered for astronaut training. In the 1960s, astronauts frequently launched in apparently perfect health, but then, a day or so into the mission, a virus would make its presence known. In his book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, Chris Hadfield takes listeners deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible.What follows is a wild 54-minute tumble to Earth that feels more or less like 15 explosions followed by a car crash.

There is a lot of rocket talk, and talk about what it is like to live without gravity on a space station. From the hours and hours of training about literally everything possible from making minor repairs on a spacecraft in zero gravity to managing serious emergencies and even a simulation with loved ones on what to do, step by step, when one dies on a space mission.No physical strength is required in space and the training on Earth is obviously quite achievable for women as there are female astronauts. It was interesting to hear about how he manages the mental and physical strains of being in space, and even though I’m never going to be in his situation and that’s why this book was such an eye-opening book for me, it still gave me a lot to take away as far as getting along with people in a team and how to be a strong, reliable leader. A startlingly intimate and warmhearted view of an arcane world, one which he makes plain even to those not educated in fields of scientific inquiry. He does tell us a great deal but, like Horizon programmes, it could all have been said in less time. If there's one type of videos on YouTube that I can never get enough of, it's space themed videos about performing simple everyday life tasks in space.