****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
There are many excellent books written by and about the Right Stuff astronauts who flew during the earlier days of the space program. However, until recently, there has been a nearly total lack of books by and about the shuttle astronauts who fly now. For better or worse, today's space program is as different from the program of the early days as the shuttle is different from the Apollo capsules. And today's astronauts are different, too.Mike Mullane was the first of the shuttle astronauts to write about his experiences in his book Riding Rockets. However, Mullane was a member of the group that made the transition from the Apollo program to the shuttle program, and the tone of his book is almost wistful; he clearly wanted to be one of the Right Stuff guys-- and he means guys-- but he ended up being a shuttle technician.Sky Walking is a memoir by a very different sort of astronaut. Tom Jones was very young during the "glory days" of the space program, so he has no Right Stuff preconceptions about astronauts as death-defying heroes. Rather, he is an Air Force Academy graduate who flew B-52s, earned a PhD in planetary sciences, and became a dedicated, professional shuttle program technician. That could have made for a dull, technical book if it weren't for his intellect and, more importantly, his powers of observation and ability to reflect on what he experienced.Jones flew four shuttle missions and took three space walks on his final mission, which was dedicated to construction on the International Space Station. His accounts of what space walks are like-- and of the hundreds of hours of training that precedes each one-- are first rate. His descriptions of the ISS and of the issues surrounding its planning, funding, and construction are excellent. I don't know of any other insider's book that deals with the ISS in such detail or with such authority. This is because Jones was an administrator in the ISS program between his third and fourth shuttle flights.The subtitle says that this is "an astronaut's memoir," and that's exactly what it is. Jones takes us trough his selection as an astronaut, his general training, his years of waiting for flights, his training for those flights, and the flights themselves. There is considerable technical information in the book, but Jones does an excellent job of clarifying it for non-experts. The real focus is on Jones himself-- what he sees, thinks, and feels about what's happening to him.This is an outstanding book. It answers the two basic questions many of us have always had: "What's it REALLY like to fly in space?" and "What are those people REALLY like?" I thoroughly enjoyed Sky Walking, and I recommend it most highly.
