An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything

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By Chris Hadfield

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$13.99

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 29, 2013. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Travel to space and back with astronaut Chris Hadfield's "enthralling" bestseller as your eye-opening guide (Slate). 

Colonel Chris Hadfield has spent decades training as an astronaut and has logged nearly 4000 hours in space. During this time he has broken into a Space Station with a Swiss army knife, disposed of a live snake while piloting a plane, and been temporarily blinded while clinging to the exterior of an orbiting spacecraft. The secret to Col. Hadfield's success-and survival-is an unconventional philosophy he learned at NASA: prepare for the worst- and enjoy every moment of it.

In An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, Col. Hadfield takes readers deep into his years of training and space exploration to show how to make the impossible possible. Through eye-opening, entertaining stories filled with the adrenaline of launch, the mesmerizing wonder of spacewalks, and the measured, calm responses mandated by crises, he explains how conventional wisdom can get in the way of achievement — and happiness. His own extraordinary education in space has taught him some counterintuitive lessons: don't visualize success, do care what others think, and always sweat the small stuff.

You might never be able to build a robot, pilot a spacecraft, make a music video or perform basic surgery in zero gravity like Col. Hadfield. But his vivid and refreshing insights will teach you how to think like an astronaut, and will change, completely, the way you view life on Earth — especially your own.

"Hadfield proves himself to be not only a fierce explorer of the universe, but also a deeply thoughtful explorer of the human condition." —Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

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On Sale
Oct 29, 2013
Page Count
304 pages
ISBN-13
9780316253048

Chris Hadfield

About the Author

Colonel Chris Hadfield is one of the most seasoned and accomplished astronauts in the world. A multiple New York Times bestselling author, his books An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, You Are Here, The Darkest Dark and The Apollo Murders have sold over a million copies worldwide. 

As well as his time as a Cold War pilot, Chris is a veteran of three spaceflights. He crewed the US Space Shuttle twice, piloted the Russian Soyuz, helped build space station Mir, conducted two space walks, and served as Commander of the International Space Station. He was also NASA's Director of Operations in Russia. 

Chris is the co-creator and host of the BBC series Astronauts: Do You Have What It Takes? and helped create and host, along with actor Will Smith, the National Geographic series One Strange Rock. His zero-gravity version of David Bowie's 'Space Oddity' has received more than 50 million views, and his TED talk on fear over 10 million. 

He advises SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and other space companies, chairs the board of the Open Lunar Foundation, leads the CDL-Space international tech incubator, and teacher a MasterClass on space operations.

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