[Book] Enduranve by Scott Kelly
I finished reading Scott Kelly's Endurance yesterday. It took me four days to read the whole thing, spending a couple of hours everyday. I picked the book up when trying to buy a few books for friends of mine (Hi Alex & Anna!). If you didn't know, Scott Kelly is an astronaut and being a spacenut, I thought it'd be interesting to read his book.
The book was itself an autobiography which revolves around the path he took to become an astronaut and the year he spent in space aboard the ISS. The flow of the book keeps you interested by alternating between stories of how he became who he is and his year long mission in space.
All in all, I definitely recommend the book to anyone who is interested in space and science. There is some profanity in the book and I came across a young readers version of the book which I guess has been cleaned up.
Moving on, in the book, Scott Kelly paints a picture of the Space Shuttle, the Soyuz, the ISS and more. I have seen a few pictures of the ISS and his descriptions were enough for me to paint a vivid picture but I felt a longing for life-size mockups of the things he describes.
For example, he describes how uncomfortable it is to sit in the Soyuz capsule. He describes the launchsuit astronauts wore when flying the Space Shuttle, when flying the Soyuz and the spacesuit worn for space walks on the ISS. He describes zipping around the space station from one module to another. He talks about how the internal surfaces of the various modules in the ISS have strips of velcro and how most tools used in the ISS have velcro dots on them (This makes it easy to place an object in one place and not have it float away).
I'm not sure what exists in the US space museums but I really wish life-size models of these things (and more) existed in India. Visiting such and getting to experience space would inspire generations.
Finally, I had an idea for an app/game/website. I'm not sure if what I describe exists already. Towards the end of the book, he was looking out of the Cupola and immediately recognized the part of earth he was looking at. If you didn't know, the Cupola is sort of an observation deck which always faces Earth. He equates the ability to immediately recognize various landspaces with the amount of time he has spent on the ISS looking down at Earth.
I would love to play a game where I am shown images of Earth, at various resolutions (say 10 km x 10 km) and I'm expected to guess what continent the landspace lies in. You could tweak the difficulty level by changing the resolution i.e. guessing a 1km x 1km tile of Earth or by asking for more specifics i.e. guessing the country or the region in the country the image is from.
P.S. : This was the first book in a new personal goal I set for myself. I have a bunch of books lying around the house unread and I need to finish most, if not all, of them by June. 12 books in 12 weeks, roughly. Expect more blogposts about books from me over the coming months.
Until next time.
The book was itself an autobiography which revolves around the path he took to become an astronaut and the year he spent in space aboard the ISS. The flow of the book keeps you interested by alternating between stories of how he became who he is and his year long mission in space.
All in all, I definitely recommend the book to anyone who is interested in space and science. There is some profanity in the book and I came across a young readers version of the book which I guess has been cleaned up.
Moving on, in the book, Scott Kelly paints a picture of the Space Shuttle, the Soyuz, the ISS and more. I have seen a few pictures of the ISS and his descriptions were enough for me to paint a vivid picture but I felt a longing for life-size mockups of the things he describes.
For example, he describes how uncomfortable it is to sit in the Soyuz capsule. He describes the launchsuit astronauts wore when flying the Space Shuttle, when flying the Soyuz and the spacesuit worn for space walks on the ISS. He describes zipping around the space station from one module to another. He talks about how the internal surfaces of the various modules in the ISS have strips of velcro and how most tools used in the ISS have velcro dots on them (This makes it easy to place an object in one place and not have it float away).
I'm not sure what exists in the US space museums but I really wish life-size models of these things (and more) existed in India. Visiting such and getting to experience space would inspire generations.
Finally, I had an idea for an app/game/website. I'm not sure if what I describe exists already. Towards the end of the book, he was looking out of the Cupola and immediately recognized the part of earth he was looking at. If you didn't know, the Cupola is sort of an observation deck which always faces Earth. He equates the ability to immediately recognize various landspaces with the amount of time he has spent on the ISS looking down at Earth.
I would love to play a game where I am shown images of Earth, at various resolutions (say 10 km x 10 km) and I'm expected to guess what continent the landspace lies in. You could tweak the difficulty level by changing the resolution i.e. guessing a 1km x 1km tile of Earth or by asking for more specifics i.e. guessing the country or the region in the country the image is from.
P.S. : This was the first book in a new personal goal I set for myself. I have a bunch of books lying around the house unread and I need to finish most, if not all, of them by June. 12 books in 12 weeks, roughly. Expect more blogposts about books from me over the coming months.
Until next time.