OSU's Relax and Read Collection: Book Reviews

Endurance by Scott Kelly

Endurance by Scott Kelly Jan 21, 2018

What on Earth can I say about this book except that it is vivid, startling proof that the future is not only here, but is also in the process of passing by! I never imagined in my lifetime that there would be a man who lived on the International Space Station for an entire year. I have stood and watched the ISS zoom by on clear nights and if I gave a thought to the souls aboard, the souls perched on the end of the world as we know it, a split second away from certain death, it wasn’t a deep thoughtful prayer for the men and women living there. I would turn to the NASA channel and watch the footage recorded from the ISS and envy the bravery of the people who went up. There they were clinging to the edges of the habitable solar system and living in weightless glory. 
So the carton Wall-E was a big hit with my family and in it a whole ship full of humans had been born and lived in space. A short blurb was illustrated to let the audience know that due to the effects of antigravity, that some bone loss might have occurred. That was after 700+ years in space.  After just one year, Astronaut Scott Kelly is writing down his own version of International Space Station glory, that after becoming a human experiment, set to gauge the effects of long periods of antigravity on the human body, he made it home and began living through the hell of taking back the weight of gravity. 
This was well worth the read, and if nothing else it will make the life a bit less glamorous. It will also encourage us to think beyond the fantasy of off-world travel and to realize that there are consequences for quitting our home planet and there are also men brave enough to become test subjects in order to make space travel safer for all humanity.