In Diary of an Apprentice Astronaut, ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti describes her career from the time she first became interested in spaceflight, through her service in the Italian Air Force, and finally her training as an astronaut. She describes everything in a way that’s easy to follow while sharing her insights as well as any relevant history. Cristoforetti’s attention to detail reflects her work ethic in preparing to become an astronaut. She writes, “It’s always harder to learn something you’ve overlooked than it is to forget what you don’t need” (pg. 52). That comes through as she discusses the preparation she took for each step of the training process and how she evaluated her work afterward, especially the failures, in order to find opportunities to improve.

Cristoforetti references the popular culture that inspired her, from Star Trek (pg. 2) to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (pg. 96) and Japanese anime (pg. 90). As a pilot, Cristoforetti references Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, one of the first pilots to describe what Tom Wolfe later termed the “right stuff” (pg. 95). Further, Cristoforetti performed her important exercise to maintain bone density while watching Battlestar Galactica on the ISS (pg. 276) and commemorated the twentieth anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager in a Starfleet uniform (pg. 329). These references make her account all the more relatable to those looking to become astronauts who grow up with the same popular culture forging their interest in spaceflight. Further, Cristoforetti explains the importance of literature in inspiring exploration when she writes, “…my first voyages were in books. I doubt whether I’d be an astronaut today if I hadn’t climbed a ladder to the Moon many years ago, if I hadn’t voyaged to the centre of the Earth, if I hadn’t travelled all the way to China with Marco Polo or fought epic battles beside Sandokan… Books gave me words and imagination” (pg. 168).

Astronaut Cristoforetti concludes, “Is it possible to conceive 14 billion years, the estimated age of the universe, more or less, when the span of my own life is at most a century, and my species has handed down its history for only 5,000 years? We’re just the blink of a star. They die giving birth to the atoms we’re made of, but they know nothing of human doings and are indifferent to our flashes of greatness, and the depth of our egos. Perhaps if we looked at things from a cosmic perspective, we’d be more likely to forgive each other our pettiness, to help each other live peacefully during our brief time on Earth” (pg. 316). In this, she evokes the sensibility of Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who described the transformative experience of observing the Earth from space. This is a must-read for space enthusiasts and fans of Cristoforetti’s, as she lived the dream of all sci-fi fans by actually becoming an astronaut. ( )