Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir [Hardcover]

Jerry Linenger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2000

“An engrossing report.”—Booklist “Vividly captures the challenges and privations [Dr. Linenger] endured both before and during his flight.”—Library Journal Nothing on earth compares to Off the Planet—Dr. Jerry Linenger’s dramatic account of space exploration turned survival mission during his 132 days aboard the decaying and unstable Russian space station Mir. Not since Apollo 13 has an American astronaut faced so many catastrophic malfunctions and life-threatening emergencies in one mission. In his remarkable narrative, Linenger chronicles power outages that left the crew in complete darkness, tumbling out of control; chemical leaks and near collisions that threatened to rupture Mir’s hull; and most terrifying of all—a raging fire that almost destroyed the space station and the lives of its entire crew. (20000214)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Imagine yourself in a decaying space station far away from the atmosphere you never realized you needed so badly, not knowing if the next malfunction would kill you or merely keep you busy. Dr. Jerry M. Linenger experienced just this and describes his harrowing but ennobling five months aboard Mir in Off the Planet, a memoir that evokes the excitement of living every day as a life-threatening adventure. Linenger's very personal writing style draws the reader into the story quickly, breezing through his childhood, Annapolis training, medical school, and selection as an astronaut, then moving quickly to the Mir assignment and its aftermath.

Linenger isn't shy about sharing his opinions. Chapter titles like "Broken Trust" and "An Attempted Coverup" show his feelings about the bizarre relationship between the crew and mission control that may have kept him and his Russian comrades in constant danger. He also heaps praise on his fellow crew members and family for their strength and perseverance throughout the mission--between communication difficulties, the cloud of doubt surrounding the station's systems, and problems like fires and toxic fumes, it's a wonder anyone survived with their sanity intact. The full-color pictures accompanying the text add further insight into life aboard Mir. --Rob Lightner

Review

The author, a NASA astronaut, orbited the earth more than two thousand times in the space station Mir and became the first American to spacewalk outside a foreign spacecraft. But he paid a high price for these distinctions. Inside, Mir was as mess, and several power failures lefts its inhabitants in total darkness. Worst of all, Linenger reports, was the lack of professionalism among their Russian handlers. "Mission control in Moscow became our enemy rather than our friend." he writes, "our nemesis rather than our support structure." Mission control threatened to cut the Russian astronauts pay if they performed poorly, and dangled bonuses for doing well. And mission control's propensity to micromanage was so extreme that the astronauts had their every activity programmed down to the minute. (The Washington Post Book World )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 007136112X
• ISBN-13: 978-0071361125
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #450,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very human astronaut's tale, February 28, 2000

By 

Colin Burgess (Sydney, AUSTRALIA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir (Hardcover)

I was wrong. I picked up Jerry Linenger's long-overdue book expecting it to be a somewhat bland account of an astronaut's existence aboard Mir. Instead I found it to be eminently readable, and a truly facinating tale, with enough intensely dramatic content to keep me reading beyond each chapter heading. Other reviewers have mentioned his account of the fire aboard Mir - a very harrowing description indeed, but I was fascinated by some of the smaller vignettes, such as his terror at standing on the end of a robotic arm, thrust out and away from the shuttle, feeling like he was in perpetual freefall off a cliff. I've read many books by and about a lot of space explorers, and it was nice to find a solid, human account of life as a recent NASA astronaut. All too often these days the astronauts just seem to be the same person going up on the same shuttle doing the same things, and little is known about them beyond their names. Thank you Jerry for humanising the shuttle-Mir program. But above all else I wish to congratulate him for a superb book written without the ubiquitous ghost-writer. The words are his own, and I feel he's crafted this book superbly. I certainly enjoyed it a great deal, and wish it every success.

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile despite being a total ego trip, January 31, 2002

By 

Kevin W. Parker (Greenbelt, MD) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir (Hardcover)

Jerry Linenger gets rapped in Dragonfly as being a total egotist, and this book does nothing to dispell the notion. He makes sure to mention in great detail the number of advanced degrees he has, his skills as an athlete, the fact that he got a shuttle flight only two years after being chosen as an astronaut, and so on. (Dragonfly makes it clear that the only reason he got a flight was that the Russians forbade rookies aboard Mir, so he had to get a quick flight before reporting for Mir training. Linenger doesn't mention this, nor his mission commander's dissatisfaction with his performance on his one flight.) There's not a whole lot about anyone else in here, and even most of the photographs are of him and him alone. The quality of the writing also makes it clear that he wrote the book himself without the aid of a professional-not that it's bad, but that it could be better. Gene Kranz did the same, but in that case it seemed to work because one got the feeling that the words were coming straight from the heart.

That being said, this remains an interesting book. Linenger is one of only five American astronauts to spend time aboard Mir and the only one (so far) to write a book it. So hearing his thoughts on the preliminary training and the experience itself remain well worth reading, whatever his faults. The most gripping part is his account of the fire onboard Mir, which was far more dangerous than NASA was originally led to believe. He also provides something of the feel of that unique experience, spending five months in cramped and alien quarters with only intermittent contact with his family.

So, in short, Linenger is not someone I'd enjoy spending much time with, I don't think, but I did enjoy reading his book. Recommended for the space enthusiast or anyone interested in a first-person account of the space program.

61 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars How did his head fit into the helmut?, February 17, 2001

By 

Jim Clark (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir (Paperback)

It was all I could do to finish this book. I nearly stopped in the middle of the introduction because of the author's incessant egotistical blather. I have never read a more self aggrandizing biography in my life. I am sure that he is the only person interested in the number of doctoral degrees - honorary or otherwise - that he possesses or that he was good enough to win some medals and trophies in his age class in triathalons. Talk about an ugly American. In one breath he decries the abyssmal living conditions facing most Russian citizens and in the next he is complaining that the Russians had not completed his own "duplex" living quarters, palatial by comparison. It is no wonder he was not accepted by the Russians with open arms. Being an Astronaut, I always thought, was about accepting the enormous risks for the honor and thrill of it all and, as a by-product, making the world a better place. It certainly should not be to complain about the risks and then to try to line your own pockets. Obviously, astronauts need and do have healthy egos, but they should be inteligent enough to know how distasteful such an unmitigated display would appear in print. It is a wonder that they could find a helmet big enough to fit this guy