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    Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir
    Unavailable
    Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir
    Unavailable
    Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir
    Ebook510 pages8 hours

    Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir

    By Tom Jones

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A gripping first-hand account of life in space and the making of an astronaut. What is it like to fly the space shuttle and work on and in the International Space Station? Veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones is uniquely qualified to give the details: he flew four shuttle missions and led three space walks to deliver the US Lab to the Station. . From B-52 pilot during the Cold War, to a PhD in planetary science, to the unbelievable rigors of astronaut training, his career inevitably pointed him toward the space shuttle. Until the Challenger exploded. Jones's story is the first to candidly explain the professional and personal hardships faced by the astronauts in the aftermath of that 1986 tragedy. He certainly has 'The Right Stuff' but also found himself wondering if the risks he undertook were worth the toll on his family. Liftoffs were especially nerve-wracking (his mother, who refuses to even get on a plane, cannot watch) but his 53 days in space were unforgettable adventures. Jones uses his background as a scientist to explain the practical applications of many of the shuttle's scientific missions, and describes what it's like to work with the international crews building and living aboard the space station. Tom Jones returned from his space station voyage to assess the impact of the 2003 Columbia tragedy, and prescribes a successful course for the U.S. in space. Stunning photographs, many taken in space, illustrate his amazing journey.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateDec 20, 2016
    ISBN9781588344052
    Unavailable
    Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir

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    Reviews for Sky Walking

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    • 4/5
      In a clever play on Michael Collins' "Carrying the Fire", one highlight chapter of this book is titled "Through the Fire", which recounts the safe and exhilarating deorbit of Columbia on one of the author's four Space Shuttle missions. The book is richly endowed with amusing and illuminating anecdotes, and gives the reader a good sense of what it means to be a Shuttle astronaut.
    • 4/5
      Several astronauts have penned memoirs over the past 40 plus years detailing their experiences. A few of them are forgettable. Some, I am thinking of Mike Collins' "Carrying the Fire and Walt Cunningham's "The All-American Boys", are classics. With the end of the Space Shuttle program comes a new memoir from Tom Jones. "Sky Walking" is an interesting look at the Shuttle program in the Post-Challenger period. Jones, a former Air Force pilot with a PhD in Planetary Science, gives an excellent view of what it is like to fly four space shuttle missions and about the problems and challenges in involved. Unfortunately like most the of the space program, the Shuttle became a prisoner of the politics of the time and was never funded properly. A hundred years from now, if mankind is still around, and clothed in-it's-right-mind, some historian will refer to Jones' book in writing the history of early space age.
    • 4/5
      Tom Jones, an astronaut with a background in planetary science, joined NASA in the first wave of recruitment after the Challenger accident and flew four shuttle flights between 1994 and 2001. He covers those flights, and his other astronaut activities, in considerable detail here. His writing isn't flowery or thrilling, but, despite the usual NASA fondness for acronyms, it is very readable, and includes moment-by-moment accounts of takeoffs and landings, which I always find deeply interesting. One thing I am very much struck by in this account is the way that small mishaps -- which occur in space, as they do everywhere else -- can loom very large. Sometimes if you miss throwing the right switch at the right time, the consequences are minor and you figure it out and go on with things. But sometimes a small mistake in putting your space suit on causes you hours of misery. Sometimes you don't get to make a spacewalk you've been training to do for the last year of your life because a door gets stuck and you can't get out of the spacecraft. And sometimes, as the fates of Challenger and Columbia remind us, the results can be tragic and deadly.I don't know, maybe it makes me feel a bit better about the problems that crop up with my own job.