Endurance by Alfred Lansing

 Endurance by Alfred Lansing from 1959 is a compelling book on the twenty-eight man Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, led by Sir Ernest Shackleton. Much of the material was from diaries written during the trip as well as interviews Lansing did with some of the men and it's great detail on an incredible story.

The goal of the expedition was to cross the Antarctic continent from east to west and it set out for the Pole from South Georgia Island, east of the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina, on board the Endurance in December 1914. The ship roughly a month into the expedition was locked in by ice in the Weddell Sea just outside the Antarctic Circle. Shackleton hoped that the ship would eventually break free and the Endurance and its crew drifted with the ice floes frozen around it. However, the ice began to crush the ship and the men abandoned ship in October 1915.

The crew took what provisions they could from the ship along with three small boats and drifted on the ice until April 1916. The ice pack they were on then began to break apart and the crew was forced onto the three boats and after several perilous days at sea landed on Elephant Island in the northern tip of Antarctica. 

Shackleton and several of his crew launched from Elephant Island April 24, 1916 for the 850-mile voyage back to South Georgia Island seeking rescue. The journey was exceedingly dangerous, both getting to the island and then safely landing on it, and they arrived on May 10, 522 days after leaving South Georgia. They then had to make a treacherous crossing over the top of the island, with Shackleton and two others walking into Stromness Whaling Station on May 21, 1916. The men there were familiar with the expedition and presumed all hands had been lost at sea, with it compelling reading in the book of Shackleton and his men walking from the center of South Georgia Island into the whaling encampment. The journey overland on South Georgia was the first recorded to have been done and Lansing notes that there wasn't another crossing of the island until almost 40 years later, and this done by expert climbers in proper gear.

Shackleton worked to secure a boat to return to Elephant Island to rescue the remaining crew and after several aborted attempts, picked them up on August 30, 1916. The book provides a great record of a remarkable battle to survive, with Shackleton and his men going from one almost impossible situation to another. 

Endurance by Scott Kelly

 Endurance by Scott Kelly is from the retired astronaut who spent a year on the International Space Station, returning to Earth March 2016. It's a solid book that largely alternates chapters between this voyage on the space station, his second long-duration visit there, and the events of his life that led up to it.

Scott's twin brother Mark is also a retired astronaut (and Arizona Senate candidate) and was interesting how the two of them didn't seem to have an exceptional childhood, other than their parents drank a lot so the two kids were often on their own to entertain themselves and wander wherever they wanted. When they were with their parents, there was often fighting or other drama due to the drinking. Scott did note how when he was eleven, his mom decided to become a police officer, just like his father, and how proud he was of her for going through the process to become one, especially passing the difficult physical fitness test. 

Scott wasn't a good student when he was young, but did find something he interested in, working as an EMT while still in high school. He graduated in the bottom half of his class and while in his freshman year of college at University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus happened across The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. He was captivated by the idea of doing something immensely difficult, risking your life for it, and surviving. After reading the book, Scott had a goal to become a Navy pilot, landing on aircraft carriers, and perhaps even an astronaut. 

In his second semester of school, Scott signed up for a precalculus course, something that was going to be very difficult for him, and after putting in the work, he understood the material, with a B-. Out of this he saw that with effort, he could learn something difficult, and later noted how he saw it was just as easy to try to excel at something as to just do something halfway. He then transferred to the State University of New York Maritime College, a small, military-oriented school in New York City. He found that he liked the military discipline, something lacking while growing up. He then did well there, something that he kept building on. 

As Scott progressed through college he knew he wanted to pilot the space shuttle, with it the most difficult craft to fly and he graduated from Maritime in 1987. Having signed up for five years of military service in exchange for an ROTC scholarship, he was assigned to flight school in Pensacola, Florida, continued to thrive and was assigned to fly jets. He progressed to serving as a test pilot and was accepted into the astronaut program in 1996, at the same time as Mark. He got his first shuttle assignment in 1999, going into space on Discovery in December and later serving as commander piloting the shuttle. He notes how he a pilot, not necessarily a scientist, but understands how important the science they do is. The shuttle program ended in 2011 and Scott spent a 159 day stint on the International Space Station in 2010-11. While he on this tour, Mark's wife Gabby Giffords was shot in Tucson, Arizona and Mark three months later flew as commander of Endeavour, its last mission before being retired, with her urging him to complete the assignment. 

The ISS has been inhabited non-stop since Nov 2000, and has been visited by more than two hundred people from sixteen nations. A standard long-duration visit there was five to six months, but a year-long mission was announced in November 2012, with Scott and Russian cosmonaut Misha Kornienko as the two people sent for this stretch in large part to see how the human body would respond to a year in space, something terribly important if we're ever going to send anyone to Mars. Scott and Misha left in 2015 and it was remarkable reading of just how much work had to be done while on board, both in science experiments and ongoing repairs to things breaking on ISS. There were so many systems that had to be fixed and problems solved while they there, it's difficult stuff, this space thing. Recounted in the book are the multiple 7+ hour spacewalks Scott did to do necessary repairs to the outside of the Space Station. During their year in space, Scott and Misha saw a total of thirteen other people come and go from the space station and it was interesting reading of the interactions with crew and the views they experienced, with him noting that of the Bahamas from space.