In pop culture, astronauts like Lovell and Glenn are depicted as a bunch of risk-taking, swaggering hotshots with the guts to breezily sit on top of a dangerous rocket. It makes for good drama, but it misleads. Astronauts maintain their calm not because they have superhuman nerves. It’s because they have mastered the art of using knowledge to reduce uncertainty. As astronaut Chris Hadfield explains, “In order to stay calm in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, all you really need is knowledge.… Being forced to confront the prospect of failure head-on—to study it, dissect it, tease apart all
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