What do You think about Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales Of A Space Shuttle Astronaut (2007)?
The shuttle program was something I didn't know much about, and don't really follow now. Most of my space nerdiness regards the Apollo program (and Mercury and Gemini as they led up to it). This book was a double whammy because I learned a lot about the shuttle program and was very entertained. I loved Mullane's writing style and no holds barred stories. (I perhaps didn't need to know quite so much about waste excretion in space, but what can you do?) I was (naively) shocked to discover just how dangerous the space program was and that many of the missions came very close to the fates of Challenger, Columbia, and their crews. Mullane's opinion was that he (and most of the other astronauts) considered it a very real possibility that they wouldn't come back from their missions (which didn't stop them from going, to the dismay of their families). He was also openly critical of the way NASA handled problems (or didn't handle them), and held them directly responsible for the Challenger and Columbia disasters. It's quite sad, really. Despite these criticisms, he managed to throw in countless anecdotes about his fellow astronauts. I was especially amused that Sally Ride shunned him after he told a dirty joke. I loved his descriptions of his relationship with Judy Resnik (who died on Challenger) and how the women in the shuttle program really showed him that his former misogynist views were groundless (though in his own defense, he cited many examples of how he'd been indoctrinated to such views). I applaud him for learning such a lesson, because it seems that not everyone was able to. To sum it up, this book is well worth reading!
—rinabeana
Funny, candid, detailed, with an easy prose style, astronaut Mullane has opinions about the shuttle program, NASA bureaucracy and the exploration of space, and he knows how to use them. He was a friend of fellow astronaut Judith Resnik, who died on Challenger, and he writes honestly about the pain of that loss. He is also very frank about the unpaid service of astronauts’ wives, and you will end this book thinking his own should be canonized. Riding Rockets is the best book by an astronaut since Michael Collins’ Carrying the Fire. Reading both back to back is a full history of the US astronaut corps.
—Dana Stabenow
Like probably half of American kids, I wanted to be an astronaut. So I was hoping this book would get down to the nuts and bolts of what it's like to be on a space shuttle, what astronauts do all day when they're up there, what the training is like, etc. Also, this book came recommended by Mary Roach. I was very disappointed. First of all, the writing style is that of a talented sixth-grader. The dialogue, such as it is, is stilted and unrealistic. (Proud of that Tarzan nickname, are you, Mike? So proud you need to use it in every sentence Judy says?) The author himself seems to be stuck permanently in sixth grade as well-- the jokes are either about poop or boobs, and self-aggrandizement alters with self-pity so fast it should have given the author whiplash. He's fixated on the idea of himself as a red-blooded, all-American, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps don't-ask-nothin'-from-nobody kind of guy, and then whines throughout the book about how the female astronauts get the most press attention, and other missions get the most press attention, and Sally Ride was mean to him because he's a serial sexual harasser, and on and on and on. In one paragraph, he asserts that the civilian astronauts don't have any life experience, and in the next, he states that he's never worked with a woman before. Because the only kind of life experience that exists is fighting in Vietnam, apparently. And even though this is supposedly the beginning of his transformation in thinking, I have never read anything less self-aware. Later on, he wants some cookies for having realized that the women he works with are competent and do their jobs well. As a self-professed middle-of-the-road guy, you'd think he'd have recognized that a woman, like Sally Ride, with a PhD in physics from Stanford was beyond competent. In fact, this book left me with serious doubts about NASA's HR. Mike Mullane is one of those people who substitutes "politically correct" for "polite." A large percentage of the book is taken up by his gleeful stories of sexually harassing other astronauts and staff. He takes about a page to go through the women in his astronaut class and give their credentials, along with their marital status and number of kids. (Of course, he never does anything similar with the men.) The only women he likes are the ones who don't object to his sexist jokes, many of which he recounts in detail. Sorry, Mike, if you're looking at a woman's chest while talking to her, that's not un-politically correct. That's both unprofessional and an asshole move. When he finally gets on the shuttle, there is very little about day-to-day life, except the details of the space toilet (which I thought was pretty interesting). There's almost nothing about the mission itself or what astronaut work looks like (his second two missions were classified, but the first wasn't). There's a lot of wanna-be poetical stuff about watching the earth below the shuttle, which is also written at a sixth-grade level, tops. If you want to know what an astronaut's job is, read a different book. The only interesting parts in the book were about NASA internal politics and the Challenger explosion. According to the author, there were a lot of internal screw-ups and a nasty office culture that led to the Challenger explosion, and the Columbia disaster several years later. He spends quite some time on the toxic climate in NASA, where astronauts fear that any dissent will get them grounded permanently, and where there is no transparency or accountability for things like flight assignments and engineering failures. The effect this lifestyle has on astronaut families is tragic, and you really do feel bad for the author's wife. Mostly, though, I only finished this book because I was waiting for my next hold to come in from the library. Don't read it if you like professionalism, women, or the English language.
—Kathryn
