Chris Hadfield -
"Astronaut's guide to life on Earth. What I learned from 4,000 hours in orbit»
The book is written by canadian test pilot and canadian space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield.
By the way, Chris Hadfield is the first canadian to perform a spacewalk, and the only canadian citizen to have visited the Mir station.
He made three space flights-lasting 8 days, 11 days and 145 days, which is not a lot of 5 months, and also made two spacewalks, spending a total of 14 hours and 50 minutes in it..
Hadfield showed us the space that we do not know, but the flight itself – the launch, docking with the ISS and return to Earth,
is only the tip of the iceberg where much more invisible part of the iceberg, like the ocean is hidden from the eyes of ordinary people, and is a long-term preparation for flight, and incredibly painful rehabilitation after him..
An interesting book, Hadfield managed not only to expand the frontiers of knowledge reader, sharing space terms, technologies,
but also to make them understand that he feels at all stages of development, the astronaut, who gave decades of his life to the space..
In 2009, the canadian space Agency selected Hadfield out of 5351 candidates! Of this number, only two became astronauts!!
A PhD is an initial requirement. in addition, Hadfield has passed hundreds of written tests, psychological tests, interviews, and of course health examinations
all in order to get into space and to the International Space Station, the size of which by the way is comparable to a football field
weighing 400 tons and hung with solar panels with an area of 8 basketball courts!
You can move around the station all day, separate modules, but you will not meet any of the crew members..!
If you think that space and the ISS is an ideal place to escape from the crowd of people and noise, this is partly only so, because the laws of physics do not allow astronauts to fully enjoy weightlessness,
because the heat in weightlessness does not rise up, the air on the ISS itself does not circulate and does not mix, for life support on the ISS,
pumps and fans constantly buzz, creating a continuous noise and hum, which is interrupted from time to time by a loud pop, due to the impact of small meteorites on the station body.
Surprisingly (!) but in space, on the ISS, in a place where leading countries have collected all the most modern advanced technologies,
there is no elementary thing such as a refrigerator, why is this so? This remains a mystery..Such elementary procedures as brushing your teeth and taking a shower,
on Earth and in space look completely different, you can not take a shower on the ISS, the astronauts just wipe themselves with wet wipes, cloth,and toothpaste after brushing your teeth and do have to swallow, so I must say the idea.
The book is also interesting in that it can be seen from the outside how Americans look at Russia, relate to Russian cosmonauts..
It should be noted that space unites countries. in 1991, when the USSR collapsed, the funding of the USSR's space programs was under threat,
while the US did everything possible to maintain regular flights to the MIR station, providing funding for such flights.
In return, the Russians exchanged experience with the Americans and Canadians, establishing and strengthening partnership relations.
In the end, such joint space exploration has only benefited everyone. Despite the fact that such approaches to disaster at NASA and Roskosmos different if there was a fire at the station,
in accordance with American standards, you first need to close the burning module of the station,
to lead the crew to a safe place, and then decide how to extinguish the fire, while the Russian approach is the main task – to put out the module, because it can be the only way to the lander Union, it is the only way to return to Earth..
It's funny, but astronauts of Western countries also watch the legendary film "White sun of the desert" before the flight, Chris Hadfield also notes the Russian tradition of "sitting on the track",
realizing that this is a way to mark the importance of an event, there is also another at first glance funny tradition,
started by Yuri Gagarin, before the launch, when the bus takes the crew to the rocket launch site, the bus stops a few hundred meters away
Gagarin got off the bus and urinated on the right rear wheel of the bus, and subsequent crews also do this before the flight.
also do this before the flight. start, but the common sense in this emptying is that the flight to orbit is very long and the cosmonaut is tied to his seat, without the ability to leave it before docking with the ISS
which is why, no matter how funny it sounds, astronauts fly to orbit in diapers.
Moreover, if you think that cosmonauts fly off the Ground and do nothing, you are mistaken,
there are Flight rules that represent a stock of knowledge, in the form of instructions that should be followed during the flight, and respond in time to emergencies and non-emergency situations with equipment…
Flight rules are quite strict prescribe to respond to problems in one way or another, if some voltage sensor on the engine elements shows extreme overloads during flight, the rules require that the fuel cell is turned off, and more, the next chain of rules says that if only two fuel cells are working, the flight must be terminated.and the crew must return to Earth..
The crew could have been preparing for this flight for years, but everything ended on the 3rd day, without starting..The crew during the flight is simply obliged to analyze hundreds of different situations
and predict potential problems, for example, if you turn off the engines of the Soyuz, because of their failure, and take the ship out of orbit, then they will not be able to start.. and from the problem of engine failure, the cosmonaut will make even a much larger problem...
In General, cosmonauts are simply forced to think critically and be a kind of pessimists in order to avoid critical situations..
The rocket itself, the Shuttle, is considered not as a miracle machine that will take people to orbit, but as an extremely dangerous means of transportation, which is loaded with tons of potentially explosive combustible mixtures (fuel). During the takeoff of the Shuttle, which moves at a speed of 13,000 km/h,
which is possible thanks to huge turbopumps that can drain the pool in 30 seconds, the risk of emergencies increases, and if they do not smoothly turn off the engines, they can simply explode.
During takeoff, cosmonauts do not just sit in a chair and fly, they track hundreds of data,
sensors, the entire flight is scheduled for the stage, after the completion of each stage of takeoff, the cosmonauts ' hands are literally on the buttons, if the event X does not occur within Y seconds, the cosmonaut must activate the compartment compartment, or any other procedures.
Cosmonauts have a huge stock of knowledge, critical thinking and analysis of potentially dangerous situations, which allows them to give cosmonauts the skills of psychologists and geologists
when it is necessary to conduct experiments on the ISS and get out of emergency situations in the shortest possible time.
An astronaut can become a geologist, psychologist, biologist, master any profession, apply any knowledge, but a psychologist can never become an astronaut, of course, if he is not a space tourist.
Space is dangerous, it is a space of unpredictable events, even though every flight is prepared for years, and all possible emergencies are analyzed. For example, in one of the two spacewalks, after spending about 5 hours outside the ISS,
Hadfield suddenly realized that water drops were flying inside the helmet, the drinking bag inside the suit was leaking, a moment later Chris felt a burning pain in his left eye, he reached out to scratch his eye, but remembered that he was in a space suit, and there was nothing to do about it, being inside the suit in outer space..
Chris tried to blink frequently to remove whatever was in his eye.but it didn't work out, he couldn't keep his eyes open for more than a second.I didn't see anything..partial blindness set in..Chris continued to carry out the planned work on the station's skin..while the eye not only ached, but also became wet with tears,
it is on Earth that tears roll down, and in the absence of gravity, the tear simply enveloped the eyeball..and while the tears stand out.. the size of the ball of salty liquid is getting bigger and bigger, but it doesn't roll down anywhere..
Gradually, the irritant spread to Hadfield's right eye, and the right eye also began to bleed, and within minutes, Hadfield was almost blind in outer space with a drill in his hands.
Hadfield radioed his situation, and mission control in Houston began to look for the cause of eye irritation, one of the reasons was called lithium hydroxide (base of an alkali metal), which is used in the suit's cleaning system, which is used to remove carbon dioxide from the suit.. the MCC suggested that there was a leak inside the suit, which is fraught with both lung damage and death…
I recommend reading and finding out how Hadfield got out of this situation, and how many little things in space that can affect the lives of astronauts..
By the way, the book was written by Hadfield in 2015, but it is funny that in it Chris Hadfield mentions the Chinese city of Wuhan, the same one where the COVID-19 outbreak was first recorded in 2019. You can also find out under what circumstances the city is mentioned by reading the book…
Many experts are skeptical about the possibility of earthlings traveling further than near-earth orbit, and in one voice declare that this is not possible..
Then why fly into space at all, people will wonder? And then, because thousands of studies on the ISS led to the development of not only agriculture, the appearance of Google Maps,
the development of robotics, and also thanks to the principles of creating fuel pumps for the Shuttle, scientists invented an artificial heart, robotics is used at nuclear power stations in places where it is simply extremely dangerous for a person to be. This list can be listed for a very long time, space exploration, experiments in zero gravity are extremely necessary for the development of mankind..
The downside for astronauts are risks associated with human health in space, if a person on the Earth from radiation and protects the atmosphere and magnetic field, the ISS dose received by astronauts is much more, and so far only major effect of these doses on the occurrence of cancer tumours, cataracts and other diseases.
. Also, after a long stay in space, a person has a weakening of the immune system, the heart contracts in the absence of gravity, vision is seriously reduced, and the reasons for this have not yet been established, bone mass is lost, the body loses calcium, in weightlessness, the spine of the astronaut is lengthened, and the person increases in height by 4-5 cm..
Cosmonauts experience tremendous overloads, for example, when Hadfield went down to Earth on the Shuttle in his first flight, the Mach number reached 12 (!), so you understand this is 340 meters per second or 14,000 km per hour (!). in a Completely different way, Hadfield describes the return to Earth on the Soyuz lander, when the vehicle leaves orbit and the fall begins, Chris calls it-54 crazy minutes of falling to Earth, during which it seems that he was in a car accident, which was accompanied by 15 explosions.
Cosmonauts call the landing of the Soyuz a complete madness, each crew has its own story related to the landing of the Soyuz.
During the descent from orbit and fall to Earth, two modules are always docked to the Soyuz-the residential module and the module for storing unnecessary things after the ISS, at a certain point in time, both modules are separated by triggering the pyrobolts and burn up in the atmosphere.
But one of the crews was unlucky, the pyrobolts on one of the compartments did not work, and the Soyuz began to fall together with the module, which disturbed the balance, the friction force increased and eventually the undelivered module caught fire.
The Union with the attached fireball lost control, with each kilometer the Union was heating up more and more, losing its balance, the Union was tumbling along unpredictable trajectories, the cosmonaut inside the Union was swaying and throwing from side to side. Over time, the bolts failed and the module separated and burned up in the atmosphere.
At this time, the Soyuz heated up outside to unprecedented temperatures, the oxygen panels were depressurized inside and condensate was already dripping on the cosmonauts, the crew was seconds from death.
But still, the Soyuz descent vehicle is quite reliable, and when approaching the Ground, the parachute and the device worked, but landed on the Ground. The Soyuz uses a gamma-ray altimeter, which activates soft landing engines 2 seconds before hitting the Ground, and in fact powder charges that extinguish the speed of fall to 1.5 m per second.
Exhausted and exhausted, the crew found the strength to open the hatch, but landing in the steppes of Kazakhstan, the burning Union set fire to dry grass, a fire was burning around! The exhausted crew had to close themselves inside the red-hot Union and wait for the fire to go away.
After a while, the commander of the ship tried to open the hatch again, and this time the fire went far away, which allowed the crew to leave the Union and get to Earth…
But one of the crew members had a serious back injury. After a short time, the Union was confronted by local residents who, after exchanging a few words with the cosmonauts, began to steal from the apparatus everything that came to hand, taking advantage of the exhausted cosmonauts. The story with this crew ended safely, and soon a rescue helicopter arrived.
This is not the end of the cosmonauts ' work, but rather months of flight analysis, consultations, study of problems in flight, and other analysis.
But the more important part is rehabilitation after the flight, for example, every day spent in space there is one day of rehabilitation-and this is getting used to gravity again, changes in pressure, weakness, exhaustion, dizziness, pain in the legs, loss of consciousness, disorders of the vestibular apparatus, nausea, loss of calcium and minerals by the body, loss of muscle mass, hardening of blood vessels, and so on.
It takes months to recover under the supervision of doctors.
While in orbit, Chris Hadfield recorded hundreds of videos from the ISS and posted them on YouTube. the video, which has already received 47 million views, is extremely popular, in which Chris sings a song while playing guitar.
In the book, Hadfield managed to convey his emotions so strongly from space that I finished reading the book to the song Space Oddity.
