Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

by Scott Kelly

“It’s from when the Russian diet consisted mostly of potatoes, cabbage, and vodka. Dill gets rid of farts.” Later I google it. It’s true.

As bad as your parents may be at their worst, they are the only parents you’ll ever have.

fighters raise peacemakers.

I have no recollection of this conversation, as I was probably looking out the window at a squirrel.

“whore” (the all-purpose Russian swear).

The Russians haven’t scrubbed a launch after the crew was strapped in since 1969.

There is a saying in the Navy about mistakes: “There are those who have and those who will.”

For each of us, there was a moment when we became self-aware, realized that we were alive, and the nothingness before that wasn’t particularly objectionable.

“Our religion is ‘Be nice to other people and eat all your vegetables,’

Only male astronauts have suffered damage to their eyes while in space, so looking at the slight differences in the head and neck veins of male and female astronauts might also help scientists start to nail down the causes. If we can’t, we just might have to send an all-women crew to Mars.

There is no good way to engage in a Twitter debate with an American hero, so I don’t.

I just experienced being trolled, in space, by the second man on the moon, while also engaging in a Twitter conversation with the president.

Flight computers simulated the drag we would experience in the heavier, less agile orbiter by putting the engines in reverse while airborne.

(John Young, when he was preparing to command the first shuttle launch, said he hoped never to attempt an RTLS because it “requires continuous miracles interspersed with acts of God.”)

my philosophy is that for complicated jobs, if you aren’t ahead of schedule, you’re already behind.

But we now know that less than 5 percent of the matter in the universe is actually observable.

I know I will miss the sense that I’m surviving by my wits, the sense that life-threatening challenges could come along and that I will rise to meet them, that every single thing I do is important, that every day could be my last.

most problems aren’t rocket science, but when they are rocket science, you should ask a rocket scientist.