Page 28 - ARUBA TODAY

A28 SCIENCE
Friday 13 OctOber 2017

U.S. astronaut’s memoir provides blunt take on year in space

By MARCIA DUNN years later, when it casually The former spaceman also
AP Aerospace Writer came up in conversation tells how he realized right
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. with other cosmonauts. “I before his wedding that he
(AP) — In his new autobi- was like really? Holy crap. didn’t want to go through
ography, retired astronaut Crazy,” Kelly recalled in an with it, but did anyway,
Scott Kelly gives an un- AP interview. leading to a troubled mar-
flinchingly blunt take on his He remembered Skripoch- riage and eventually di-
U.S. record-breaking year ka had looked shaken, but vorce, and how he initially
in space and the challeng- thought it was because he didn’t want “that space
ing life events that got him had been out on his first station stink” on him — get-
there. spacewalk. ting space station assign-
This isn’t your usual astro- On Wednesday, the Rus- ments — for fear it would
naut’s memoir. sian Space Agency’s press limit his shuttle-flying op-
Kelly recounts dumpster department said it con- portunities. He flew twice
diving on the International tacted Skripochka, who on space shuttles and had
Space Station for discard- did not confirm Kelly’s ac- two extended stays at the
ed meals after a supply In this Wednesday, March 2, 2016 photo provided by NASA, count. No other comment space station, sharing the
capsule was destroyed International Space Station (ISS) crew member Scott Kelly of was provided. entire 340-day mission, his
and ending up with “some the U.S. reacts after landing near the town of Dzhezkazgan, “I’ve often pondered what last, with Russian Mikhail
dude’s used underwear” in Kazakhstan. we would have done if Kornienko.
his hands. He writes about Associated Press we’d known he was drift- When asked if it was dif-
the congestion, head- tattoo parlor before launch their lives, things they might ing irretrievably away from ficult exposing his weak-
aches and burning eyes he and got black dots all over not be proud of, things that the station,” Kelly writes. “It nesses when astronauts are
endured from high carbon his body to make it easier we all have that makes us probably would have been supposed to be perfect
dioxide levels and the feel- to take ultrasound tests in normal, relatable people,” possible to tie his family or close to it, Kelly replied,
ing no one cared at Mission orbit, and how he fash- he told The Associated into the comm system in “Naw, I feel like I’m like a
Control in Houston. ioned extra puke bags for Press. “So I felt like sharing is his spacesuit so they could below-average guy do-
In his book, Kelly tells how a nauseous crewmate. good, but ... the bad stuff, say good-bye before the ing slightly above-average
prostate cancer surgery Kelly said his goal in writ- too, makes the story more rising CO2 or oxygen depri- stuff.”
almost got him banned ing “’’Endurance: A Year believable.” vation caused him to lose Kelly figured he might write
from space station duty, in Space, A Lifetime of In the book, he writes about consciousness — not some- a book, given it was NASA’s
and how his vision problem Discovery,’ was to tell the a little-known incident that thing I wanted to spend a longest single spaceflight
during an earlier space- whole story. he says occurred during lot of time thinking about ever. So he kept a journal in
flight almost cost him the So many other NASA as- his first space station stint in as my own spacewalk was orbit and took notes about
one-year mission, which tronauts’ memoirs “focus 2010, when a Russian cos- approaching.” how the place looked,
spanned from March 2015 on the good stuff and not monaut came untethered Published by Knopf , “En- smelled and felt “to make
to March 2016. necessarily the personal during a spacewalk and durance” comes out Tues- someone feel like they
He tells how he visited a things that happened in began floating away. Luck- day. So does a version for were on the space station.”
ily, Oleg Skripochka hap- children, “My Journey to “The book hasn’t come out
pened to hit an antenna the Stars,” put out by Pen- yet,” Kelly said, “and as I
that bounced him back guin Random House. get closer to it coming out,
toward the space station, The 53-year-old Kelly said I’m thinking, ‘Man, I’ve got
enabling him to grab on he didn’t discover his pas- to live with this for the rest of
and save his life, according sion for aviation and space my life.’ “
to Kelly. until reading Tom Wolfe’s Kelly’s identical twin broth-
Even though he was 1979 book “The Right Stuff” er, Mark, also a former
Tour to the Red Light Lipstixaruba@outlook.com aboard the space station in college. Kelly writes that Navy pilot and NASA astro-
District with a Private at the time, Kelly said he he was a terrible student naut as well as author, was
Guide & a FREE bottle (297) 630-5329 didn’t learn about it un- and likely suffered from at- among the several people
of wine...
til his yearlong mission five tention deficit disorder. who read early drafts.q