Make the Most of Your One Orbit
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Make the Most of Your One Orbit, Leroy Chiao, 2016.
This book is only available via the author’s web site – unless, I suppose, you find one on the second-hand market – and it took me a couple of years to get around to purchasing it. I’m glad I finally did. An American astronaut of Chinese heritage, fluent in Mandarin, Chiao signed it in English and Chinese for me, which also made for a pleasing personal touch.
Chiao has created a poetic and soulful work here. This coffee table book juxtaposes beautiful photographs of Earth from space with thought-provoking musings on what he saw, and what it meant to him. He elegantly shares the emotions that welled up when he gazed down on our planet with his own eyes. Enhancing these feelings, a number of Chiao’s fellow astronauts add their own reminiscences and reflections.
The book reminds me in many ways of a long-time favorite, “The Home Planet,” and other similar large-format books that I eagerly devoured decades ago. They ignited my interest in the experience of space flight, and widened my wish to preserve our environment. Chiao’s descriptions are poetic, lyrical, dreamlike at times, and capture moments that photographs could not. We learn of the glow of the planet, and the swirls of moving weather. I enjoyed his emphasis on flying over China, expressing his connections to it. Photos and words blend to widen the reading experience.
Chiao also shares his visceral personal impressions of getting to and from space, including a fascinating comparison of launching in the shuttle and in a Soyuz spacecraft. Few have done both. In stark contrast to the expansive views of our planet, we see the cramped and cluttered interior of the space station, and learn what it is like to live and work in it.
I finished the book feeling more peaceful and mindful than when I began. I think that’s a good thing.