Chris Hadfield's creative fiction mission
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield famously filmed a music video from orbit, performing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” on the International Space Station. Since his space faring days, Hadfield has taken on a new creative mission: fiction writing.
"The Apollo Murders” is a speculative science fiction thriller penned by Hadfield. It has spurred a follow up book, television series, and is just one of a handful of writing projects from the space flier, pilot, and engineer.
Hadfield’s newest book is “The Defector,” a follow-up to “The Apollo Murders." He said that writing provides him with an exciting outlet to share his experiences in space.
“At this stage of life, where I've had a lot of those experiences," Hadfield said. "It's just as much fun to try and be someone who's providing those ideas, whether it's, you know, playing guitar in a space station, or making TV series, or now writing nonfiction and thriller fiction.”
A definitive oral history of the Space Shuttle program
Veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones’ new book "Space Shuttle Stories: Firsthand Astronaut Accounts From All 135 Missions." chronicles the decades-long Space Shuttle program with interviews from participants of those more than 100 missions.
Jones collected this history of the Space Shuttle program through interviews with 133 of his astronaut colleagues. He also spent about 53 days in space on four Space Shuttle missions.
Jones said that he wrote his newest book to document the humanity behind each mission on the Space Shuttle.
“I want people to walk away with the human experience of the joys of flying on the shuttle, we thought we were the luckiest people on the planet to fly the shuttle," Jones said. "And then to remember the tragedies that occurred and apply those to our future planning in an exploration of space, I think is what people will take away.”
