Ready for Launch: An Astronaut's Lessons for Success on Earth - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

SCOTT KELLY is a NASA astronaut best known for spending a record-breaking year in space. He is a former US Navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and veteran of four spaceflights. Kelly commanded the space shuttle Endeavour in 2007 and twice commanded the International Space Station. He lives in Houston, Texas. You can follow him on Facebook at NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly, and on Instagram and Twitter at @StationCDRKelly. Visit him at scottkelly.com.

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1

Fear to Take Flight

When I was a kid, I was fearless. I ran with scissors and other sharp objects. I’d climb as high as I could, and then jump right off.

When I was in the eighth grade, my family and I went on a cruise to the Bahamas. We weren’t wealthy by any measure, but I think my dad had won some money on a Super Bowl pool . . . so there we were.

It was the first time I had been out of the country, and the ship was docked at a port in Nassau. I don’t remember much about the buffet or onboard entertainment because I was busy jumping off the back of the ship at the challenge of another young guest. Today, that kind of thing goes viral, and not in a positive way. Back then, there was a much smaller audience for my risky behavior. I was lucky to surface in one piece. But I was a slow learner.

It wouldn’t be the last time I jumped--or, more accurately, fell--from the back of a ship.

When I was on a port call in Spain aboard a training ship in college, some of my classmates and I hatched a plan to sneak ashore for a night of excitement. We devised a scheme to use a ladder to climb down to the dock. I was the first to go. But the ladder wasn’t secured, so I fell about fifty feet directly into the water with a heavy rope-and-wood ladder wrapped around me. Disappearing into the dark waters didn’t even faze me at the time. It was just another college prank.

This is the kind of story that you laugh about later, but my casual attitude about falling off large boats was not the quality that showed I had “the right stuff” to be an astronaut. I didn’t know it at the time, but that kind of fearlessness was exactly what I would need to overcome if I was going to survive.

My experience of fear started to change when I was in flight school learning to fly the TA-4J Skyhawk, the US Navy’s advanced jet trainer. I remember one particular day at Goliad Field, a little airstrip in the middle of the grasslands of southeast Texas, where I was practicing the skills I’d need to qualify to land on an aircraft carrier. It was uneventful--I did my ten landings and turned around to come home. When I got out of the plane and came up into the ready room, it was clear that something had happened. The other pilots in my class were all looking somber. And quiet.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Someone told me: “Bryce crashed. He’s dead.”

Bryce Gearhart was my friend. He had been on the next practice landing session directly after mine. He’d come into his landing pattern a little too fast, yanked back on the stick too hard, pulled too many g’s, and lost consciousness. He flew right into the ground.

It had been a pretty routine flight, during the day, in good weather. All of a sudden, my friend--a guy nearly the same age as me--was dead.

I remember thinking, Life is more fragile than I’d believed.

In the course of my career in the military and at NASA, I’ve lost many friends and colleagues--more than forty people--in aviation and space mishaps. Seeing skilled pilots and astronauts lose their lives has a way of resetting your fear factor. So has nearly killing myself with the smallest mistakes.

One of my near misses happened when I was flying the F-14 Tomcat. It’s an impressive machine but challenging to fly, and especially difficult to land on an aircraft carrier.

That night, I was flying combat air patrol in the Persian Gulf with my back seater, Chuck “Gunny” Woodard. We were a couple hundred miles from the ship. It was a perfectly clear night with a bright Moon. The ship signaled that we were allowed to come back early, and we were happy because it was late and we were tired. We had a lot of fuel left, which meant we could get back fast.

I moved the throttles into full afterburner and pretty soon we were supersonic, faster than the speed of sound and heading for the ship. At about thirty miles out, we started our descent. We were supposed to hit that point at 250 knots, but as we approached it, it was clear we were going way too fast. I tried to slow down, pulling too many g’s--just like Bryce on the day he crashed.

Then, as we descended, we were suddenly surrounded by a thick fog. Pretty soon the aircraft carrier started turning, which further disoriented me. Suddenly, the radar altimeter started going off, signaling that we were getting close to the water. But with so much going on, the sound was too distracting, so I shut it off.

The next thing I heard was Gunny yelling, “Pull up!”

Instinct kicked in. I pulled back on the stick. When I looked at my instruments, I saw we were passing through 800 feet descending at 4,000 feet per minute. We were only twelve seconds away from hitting the water.

We barely made it. We bottomed out at about 300 feet and then climbed back to our normal altitude. Somehow I was able to put the thoughts of almost being dead behind me and focus on the task at hand: landing on the ship. We managed to regain our composure and flew back to the ship in silence. It wasn’t a great landing but good enough considering the circumstances.

That night, I was scared straight. Never again did I ignore what that radar altimeter was trying to tell me. I depended on that instrument for my life and I always remembered that.

Winston Churchill once said, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

I have to respectfully disagree. While I’ve never had to dodge a literal bullet, I do have some experience with nearly killing myself. It’s not “exhilarating”; it just scares the crap out of you.

It does, however, have a way of focusing your attention on what matters.

As I advanced in my career and got closer to flying missions in space, I became better acquainted with fear. Feeling it. Respecting it. And knowing exactly how to work through it. But these are skills no one trains you for. To master fear, you have to learn it the hard way.

When the space shuttle was still flying, we used to have a meeting called the “pilot symposium.” The space shuttle commanders and pilots--NASA’s terms for “pilots” and “copilots”--would gather to go over the most recent landings. We’d review what went right and what went wrong. Every detail was scrutinized . . . and so was our performance.

At one of these meetings, a commander who’d landed the shuttle recently explained how his leg shook uncontrollably while he was applying the brakes to bring the space shuttle to a stop. As he described this phenomenon, he said he was confused as to why this had happened to his leg.

But all of us who’d spent time on aircraft carriers looked at each other. We realized that the commander was an air force colonel--he’d never had to do the terrifying aircraft carrier landings we had. He hadn’t learned this lesson yet. . . . But we knew exactly what had happened.

What he was describing was completely normal in a high-pressure situation. About half the time I landed on the ship, one of my legs would shake uncontrollably, just as he described. That’s what happens when you’ve got to land a 64-foot-wide fighter jet on a 250-foot-wide landing strip that’s often pitching, rolling, heaving, and always moving away from you at an angle. We’d learned the hard way how adrenaline floods your system in high-pressure moments, causing uncontrollable muscle shakes--no matter how well trained you are.

I disagree with FDR’s famous line that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” In my experience, fear focuses our attention and energy toward the biggest threat and teaches some of life’s...