Dragonfly: Epic Sci-Fi Survival Adventure in Outer Space - Perfect for Space Exploration Enthusiasts & Sci-Fi Book Lovers

What a fascinating book! You learn a lot of behind the scenes shenanigans in the space program. Post Challenger NASA had no real purpose. The agency was adrift and needed to justify spending billions of tax dollars on this super expensive space shuttle. Sure, the Hubble telescope launch and fix was important, but other than that, what? Hey! why don't we collaborate with the Russian's and send our astronauts aboard MIR. This could be sort of a test to see how well things could be for the ISS. What could go wrong? Plenty.Very few astronauts wanted to volunteer for this crazy unknown. The few that did were treated like castaways by NASA. Shipped over to Star City, Russia and mostly abandoned, the astronauts began to suffer all forms of mental breakdowns and neurosis. Once aboard MIR, when the space hoopty suffered failure after failure, their mental issues were exacerbated. The MIR was constantly leaking coolant and had numerous power failures. I can't imagine what kind of mold and other toxic garbage was growing in there. A fire almost killed two cosmonauts and one astronaut. A poorly planned docking of Progress causes a decompression that could have killed two cosmonauts and one astronaut. The Russians literally fly by the seat of their pants. It's all about winging it and this puts unbelievable stress on the cosmonauts.There are a lot of interesting characters that emerge in this book. The astronauts seem maniacally obsessed to get up in space. They're treated like garbage and though many of them have advanced degrees and are smart as hell they continue staying at a place that treats them as expendable. Out of all of the astronauts, Shannon Lucid comes out smelling like a rose. Even though she had an emotional breakdown from being abandoned by NASA in Star City she bucked up and proved her mettle up in the space station. Thagaard, Dunbar, Blaha, Linenger, come across as whiners. I will say that for all the whining Jerry Linenger did he was the only astronaut to have the stones to tell everybody how unsafe MIR is. Frank Culbertson comes across as a typical butt covering NASA yes man, sucking up to George Abbey, and mismanaging the Phase One program every step of the way. In typical NASA fashion, he was promoted to head the ISS program. Haha! What Judy Resnik saw in this guy I'll never know. Sticktime, I'm assuming.Of course, George Abbey is featured as a Machiavellian character who sends shudders of fear through the astronaut office. The astronauts who sucked up to Abbey are rewarded with plenty of flight assignments. It was well known that Abby had a bias against Air Force pilots and favored Navy pilots. No astronaut wants to be stuck in astronaut purgatory. So consequently, astronauts were doing their best to get into the good graces of Abbey. I found this to be truly pathetic. This management style is awful, and it created turmoil and antagonism in the astronaut ranks.All in all, this is a great read. It will make you rethink a lot of your assumptions about NASA and the astronaut corps. I also wonder how much we are being kept in the dark about what really goes on up on the ISS. It's amazing what you'll see when NASA's curtain is pulled back and you witness what goes on behind closed doors.