Today a German Astronaut arrived on the ISS. And he will be there till November. But how do you become an astronaut? What does living in the Space Station feel like?

Luckily there is someone who wrote a book about all this. Chris Hadfield. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, than maybe the fact that he was the astronaut who recorded the Mayor Tom Cover while in the ISS.

Sadly that video is not available anymore, but here you can see him in a recording with the Barenaked Ladies:

Yes, he can sing and play a guitar. And even better: he can explain the most complicated thing in a way that everyone can understand it.

You can feel his passion and joy in being an astronaut in every page of that book. If you haven’t read it, you really need to.

I would put this book on the reading list for every software developer. Why? Because he explains in a very good way why “prepare for the worst, expect the best” helped him to achieve what he did. There is a lot that can go wrong when you are in space. But if you are prepared, you can “work the problem”. Something we as developers should do more. Think about the possible problems before deploying a big new feature. Have plans when the catastrophe strikes you. That leads to more confidence and less stress.

Go buy it.

And now Chris Hadfield shows what happens if you wring a washcloth in space: