Out of Orbit (42 page)

The librarians helped me find the many books that sat in piles on my desk, tall as pillars. To ignite things, I started out by reading two of the best: Tom Wolfe’s
The Right Stuff
, and Norman Mailer’s
Of a Fire on the Moon
. Really, reading them just depressed the hell out of me, but at least they got me going. Of the hundreds of other books, magazine pieces, and newspaper articles I have read and sometimes stolen from (but always with a suitable measure of shame), I would like to make particular mention of the most illuminating:
Comm Check … The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia
, by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood;
Columbia—Final Voyage
, by Philip Chien;
Red Star in Orbit
, by James E. Oberg;
Off the Planet: Surviving Five Perilous Months Aboard the Space Station Mir
, by Jerry Linenger; and
Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir
, by Bryan Burroughs (although I suspect that Bryan’s book in part made NASA less trusting of my own intentions, so I feel like, if anything, he owes me).

I also wish to give a loud and long shout-out to the awesome resource that is
Space.com
, particularly the first-rate reporting of Jim Banke. His work helped me reconstruct the days before
Endeavour
’s belated launch with what would have been an otherwise impossible level of detail.

I’d like to thank the Weakerthans, the finest band ever to come out of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and perhaps the world. Their albums served as much of the inspiration for my writing this book, and I also lifted a phrase for the title of
Chapter 6
from “Left and Leaving,” which is one of their great songs.

No one has cared more about this book than my family, who have lived and died with it right along with me. My loving parents, John and Marilyn, provided a much-needed mix of encouragement, advice, and copy-editing expertise. My brother, Steffan, was an early supporter and reader, as were my parents-in-law, Jim and Alice Higginson. (My best friend, Phil Russell, also slogged through the first draft of the book; never have so many remarks in the margins included the salutation “dude.”) And you can never underestimate the amount of a book’s weight that is shouldered by a spouse. Perfect Lee helped float me through some trying times, and she never once made me feel bad for failing to hear her calling when I was lost in space.

Not only that, but I wrote the final few pages of
Out of Orbit
in the maternity ward at Ottawa’s General Hospital, sitting next to Lee, who was confined to a white-sheeted bed, heavily pregnant. She was in the hospital for three weeks before our first son, Charley, was born along with the last words on these pages. It was an exhausting, exhilarating, gut-crazy time. It was, I like to imagine, exactly like riding a rocket.

CHRIS JONES
, who joined
Esquire
as a contributing editor and sports columnist, became a writer at large when he won the 2005 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing for the story that became the basis for this book. Previously he was a sportswriter at the
National Post
, where he won an award as Canada’s outstanding young journalist. His work has also appeared in
The Best American Magazine Writing
and
The Best American Sports Writing
anthologies. He lives in Ottawa, Canada.

The crew of STS-113, including Expedition Six, board the Astro-Van on their way to the launchpad. Ken Bowersox is in the foreground, flashing the victory sign. Nikolai Budarin is behind him, smiling at the camera. And Don Pettit is the last of the astronauts, waving to reporters and friends.

After a series of delays, the space shuttle
Endeavour
, with Expedition Six stowed mid-deck, finally lifts off into Florida’s night sky on November 23, 2002.

Expedition Six poses for a family portrait shortly after their arrival at the International Space Station on November 26, 2002: (from left) Nikolai Budarin, Don Pettit, and Ken Bowersox.

Don Pettit’s “Saturday Morning Science”: A thin film of water held in a loop of wire reacts to being shaken in weightlessness.

Don Pettit, Expedition Six’s science officer, uses his trusty Makita drill to fix the troublesome Microgravity Glovebox inside Destiny, the American lab.

Don Pettit and Ken Bowersox, nearly lost in the clutter inside Destiny. Floating above them are the supply tank and pump for the Internal Thermal Control System.

Nikolai Budarin, Expedition Six’s Russian flight engineer, is pictured inside the relatively orderly Zvezda, the heart of the International Space Station.

Don Pettit (left) and Ken Bowersox, trying on their spacesuits inside the Quest Airlock, in preparation for their first spacewalk, in January 2003.