Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir - Tapa blanda

On January 12, 1997, Jerry M. Linenger launched aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis en route to an historic rendezvous: the Space Station Mir, where he was to be one of the few American astronauts to formally partner with Russian Cosmonauts, as part of a joint initiative to prepare for a New International Space Station. The eleven-year old Mir was battered and dilapidated, and operating far beyond its design life. Still, few anticipated that Linenger's Mir mission would be part of what has become known one of the most dangerous in the 36-year history of manned space travel. Linenger tells the story of those five months on Mir with the immediacy of one who experienced them. His story is also an inspirational one. As the first American ever to perform a space walk outside a foreign spacecraft in a Russian spacesuit, Linenger was an ambassador for NASA and his country, but he was also a husband and father, who missed his young son and his wife, pregnant with their second child. He brings to life the joys and frustrations of space travel, as well as the humorous side of life in orbit. (His on-board shaving cream was a specially formulated NASA brand called "Astro Edge.") In frank, personable, and ultimately optimistic prose, he shows readers what it's like to be an astronaut, trying to live and work with good humor on a rickety, flammable space station well "off the planet."