Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space
    Unavailable
    Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space
    Unavailable
    Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space
    Audiobook (abridged)6 hours

    Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space

    Written by Chris Jones

    Narrated by Erik Davies

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    An incredible, true-life adventure set on the most dangerous frontier of all-outer spaceIn the nearly forty years since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, space travel has come to be seen as a routine enterprise-at least until the shuttle Columbia disintegrated like the Challenger before it, reminding us, once again, that the dangers are all too real.
    Too Far from Home vividly captures the hazardous realities of space travel. Every time an astronaut makes the trip into space, he faces the possibility of death from the slightest mechanical error or instance of bad luck: a cracked O-ring, an errant piece of space junk, an oxygen leak . . . There are a myriad of frighteningly probable events that would result in an astronaut's death. In fact, twenty-one people who have attempted the journey have been killed.
    Yet for a special breed of individual, the call of space is worth the risk. Men such as U.S. astronauts Donald Pettit and Kenneth Bowersox, and Russian flight engineer Nikolai Budarin, who in November 2002 left on what was to be a routine fourteen-week mission maintaining the International Space Station.
    But then, on February 23, 2003, the Columbia exploded beneath them. Despite the numerous news reports examining the tragedy, the public remained largely unaware that three men remained orbiting the earth. With the launch program suspended indefinitely, these astronauts had suddenly lost their ride home.
    Too Far from Home chronicles the efforts of the beleaguered Mission Controls in Houston and Moscow as they work frantically against the clock to bring their men safely back to Earth, ultimately settling on a plan that felt, at best, like a long shot.
    Latched to the side of the space station was a Russian-built Soyuz TMA-1 capsule, whose technology dated from the late 1960s (in 1971 a malfunction in the Soyuz 11 capsule left three Russian astronauts dead.) Despite the inherent danger, the Soyuz became the only hope to return Bowersox, Budarin, and Pettit home.
    Chris Jones writes beautifully of the majesty and mystique of space travel, while reminding us all how perilous it is to soar beyond the sky.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMar 6, 2007
    ISBN9780739342008
    Unavailable
    Too Far From Home: A Story of Life and Death in Space
    Author

    Chris Jones

    Enter the Author Bio(s) here.

    Related to Too Far From Home

    Related audiobooks

    Technology & Engineering For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Reviews for Too Far From Home

    4/5

    42 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      From Nov, 2002 to April, 2003, three men waited in the International Space Station waited for their ride home. It was delayed by the event of the Challenger shuttle disaster. While NASA tried to learn the reason of the failure and build a new shuttle to retrieve them, the astronauts Ken Bowersox, Don Pettit, and Nikolai Budarin waited, carefully reserving food and water, excercised as best they could, and devised experiments to keep them challenged. Exciting and fact filled, the story was marred by language that was a little stilted and sometimes clumsy.
    • 4/5
      Merely in terms of insider astronaut/cosmonaut history, gossip, and lore (did you know Tank Girl is the cult film of the American female astronaut corps?), Chris Jones’ book would be a great read, but add the true story of the American-Russian space station crew left stranded in orbit after the Colombia space shuttle burned up on re-entry, and it’s . . . forgive me . . . an out-of-this-world read.
    • 4/5
      Read this one in a very short time - kept you curious throughout. Nothing life and death, but it does a good job of painting a picture of life on the ISS, as well as the lonliness of space. Good read, nothing too technical or jargony. Liked it very much.
    • 5/5
      This book was good enough that I read it in a day and a half. It could have been dry and full of technical astrophysics and jargon. But it was actually very readable. Space, space travel, and the International Space Station came alive in its pages for me. But it did make me never want to go into space. Yikes.
    • 3/5
      Jones does a fine job bringing together the broad, sweeping history of the space program with emphasis on the individual human beings who have taken part in mankind's greatest endeavor. The book gives the reader an experience that most would ever have: space flight. It does this through gritty (perhaps gory) descriptions of weightlessness, isolation, and possible and real disaster in space. While it is slightly juvenile at times in expression and exuberance (I'll give Jones a break since he is a sports writer), it is, never the less, a cracking good read. Jones brings a passion to what might be considered a very dull subject.Funny enough I heard an interview with Jones on the Canadian Broadcasting System's "Quirks and Quarks" in which he stated that after completing the book he had absolutely no desire to go to outer-space. I think he might have cured me of that desire too.
    • 5/5
      I didn't know how interested in space I was until I read this book! Chris Jones breezes over the history of the space race in this book, but he concentrates on a 2003 mission that sent three astronauts to live in space for several months. These three astronauts were supposed to come home on the Columbia. But on February 1, 2003, Columbia was destroyed upon reentering the earth's atmosphere, killing the seven astronauts on board. The three men aboard the Interational Space Station were left stranded with no telling when they would be able to come home. Usually with books like this I end up skipping big chunks of the more factual historical stuff. Jones does a good job of keeping it all interesting, though. He breaks up the sections and, though it sometimes felt like he was skipping around a lot, it makes the facts a lot easier to read. I'm pegging this for an Alex award!
    • 4/5
      Too Far From Home was a gripping story that served as an ideal primer for someone (me) who has an interest in scientific/space reading but has very little history to serve as a background. The book is written in the style of a nonfiction novel with plenty of tangential stories that build a good foundation. I found it truly riveting. It's the rare book that manages to prevent me from sleeping but this one did it. So why only 4* and not 4.5 or 5? It's because I felt that the book did the old bait and switch. The cover and notes suggest that these astronauts on the International Space Station were stranded after the explosion of Space Shuttle Columbia and that it's going to be a real nail biter as to whether or not they'll make it out of there alive. In fact, that is the core story that the book follows but its real merit lies in the total package which includes a history of the US and Russian space race and the details for each of these two space programs. Those details flow into the timeline and characters of this core story to fill it out into a great book. Whether or not it's a nail biter, I'll let you decide. I'm not even going to put any spoilers for you to cheat. Read it. It's excellent.It made me want to break out a giant telescope and visit distant places.