Hadfield attended White Oaks Secondary School in Oakville, Ontario until his senior year and then graduated as an Ontario Scholar from Milton District High School in 1977. As a member of the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, he earned a glider pilot scholarship at age 15 and a powered pilot scholarship at age 16. After graduating from high school in 1978, he joined the Canadian Armed Forces and spent two years at Royal Roads Military College followed by two years at the Royal Military College of Canada, where he received a B.Eng. degree ( with honours) in mechanical engineering in 1982. [2] He also conducted his post-graduate research at the University of Waterloo in 1982. [13] Before graduating, he also underwent basic flight training at CFB Portage la Prairie. In 1983, he took honours as the top graduate from Basic Jet Training at CFB Moose Jaw, and then went on to train as a tactical fighter pilot with 410 Tactical Fighter Operational Training Squadron at CFB Cold Lake, flying the Canadair CF-116 Freedom Fighter and the McDonnell Douglas CF-18 Hornet. After completing his fighter training, Hadfield flew CF-18 Hornets with 425 Tactical Fighter Squadron, flying intercept missions for NORAD. He was the first CF-18 pilot to intercept a Soviet Tupolev Tu 95 long-range bomber in the Canadian Arctic. [6] I received a copy from Penguin Random House Canada and Tundra Books in exchange for a honest review.

Hadfield was commemorated on Royal Canadian Mint silver and gold coins for his spacewalk to install Canadarm2 on the International Space Station in 2001. [6] In Sarnia, the city airport was renamed to Sarnia Chris Hadfield Airport in 1997 [61] and there are two public schools named after him – one in Milton, Ontario and the other in Bradford, Ontario. [62] [63] The asteroid 14143 Hadfield is also named after him. In 2005, 820 Milton Blue Thunder Squadron was renamed 820 Chris Hadfield Squadron in honour of Hadfield, who was a cadet there from 1971 to 1978. [64] The Town of Milton also named a municipal park and street after Hadfield. [65] His name was in 2014 added to the Wall of Honour at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, [66] and, in 2020, the newly discovered Andrena hadfieldi, a species of bee, was named in his honour. [67]Hadfield, Chris (2016). The Darkest Dark. Illustrated by Terry and Eric Fan. New York: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-39472-7.

Hadfield uses his space experience to good purpose in this thriller, a superb blend of fact and fiction set in the midst of the Cold War. Is it 1-star bad? Probably not. There were a few sections that were quite fun if taken in isolation. A couple of plot points were also interesting, like what the Russians found on the moon and the constant one-upmanship between the 2 nations. Other than that, though, it was an unfocused mess.

The next part is where it really gets messy, but I’ll keep it vague to avoid spoilers. Let’s just say that things don’t go well when Apollo 18 tries to sabotage the Soviet station, and there is absolute chaos for a few minutes as well a high probability that the space capsule has been damaged. A bunch of other shit has gone wrong as well, but despite it all, the astronauts go ahead and hit the Go-To-The-Moon button to do their burn for lunar orbit. Even when NASA gets involved again, they learn that the capsule has so many issues that it makes the Apollo 13 mission look like a cakewalk by comparison. I knew going in that this is one of those books that relies on the author's name recognition to sell copies, but even with my low expectations, this wasn't good. It's a silly story, told poorly, with not much else going for it.

If there was a battle on the Moon, he would win. The Apollo Murders takes place in an alternate history version of 1973, in which the US is preparing to launch Apollo 18 (in reality, Apollo 17 was the last one). The crew will be made up of all military members, and the mission evolves into some good ol’ Cold War spy stuff involving a recently launched Soviet space station and a Soviet moon rover. Astronaut Chris Hadfield (famous for his viral videos from the International Space Station) shares how he was afraid of the dark when he was little. This is a good book for talking about overcoming your fears and following your dreams (and the first moonwalk). Kaz notices small oddities during the Apollo 18 mission, but nothing immediately rings alarm bells in his mind. Thus, for most of the expedition, Kaz believes things are proceeding as scheduled. But a test pilot is trained to trust his instincts, and Kaz has excellent intuition.Chris Hadfield is a Canadian former military test pilot and astronaut with a string of accomplishments in space, including being a mission specialist, operating the first Canadian robotic arm, doing spacewalks, flying on a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft, visiting the Russian space station MIR, and commanding the International Space Station. Hadfield even made a video of himself singing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” on the International Space Station (available on YouTube). A fun thriller that satisfied me scientifically. Non-science nerds are going to complain about the info-dumps, whereas I was thinking, “tell me more about the combustion process”. Hadfield is almost uniquely qualified to write this book, former test pilot, astronaut, and commander of the ISS. He obviously has a good grasp of space history, both Russian and American. He speaks Russian, having spent time on both Mir and the ISS and in Star City, Russia. In short, he knows how the Russian space program, NASA, and astronauts look, sound, and act. He can keep it real. Especially that “you can have emotions on your own time" ethos that seems to govern the space program. Hadfield manages to shoehorn in a couple of female characters. One rather minor one is a geologist involved in the lunar program, who becomes a love interest for the more prominent CAPCOM, Kaz. The other is a female cosmonaut who provides much of the opposition needed for the book's purpose. I’ll never feel the same way again looking up into the sky at night, knowing that somewhere up there there could be people like Luke, Chad even Svetlana looking down on Earth going about their duties. Mosher, Dave (July 8, 2018). "Astronaut Chris Hadfield says we could have gone to Mars decades ago — here's why we haven't". Business Insider. Hadfield has since retired as astronaut, but he recently shared some of his spaceflight knowledge as part of a new web course on the online education platform MasterClass.

Inspired by the childhood of real-life astronaut Chris Hadfield and brought to life by Terry and Eric Fan's lush, evocative illustrations, The Darkest Dark will encourage readers to dream the impossible. LeBlanc, Steve (April 6, 2017). "STREET SMARTS: Milton's Chris Hadfield Way has 'out of this world' connection". www.insidehalton.com . Retrieved December 2, 2017.

And this has all the bones of a great thriller. The premise is fantastic, the setting atmospheric, and who doesn't love a deadly cat-and-mouse game playing out in space? Since this is fiction weaved into real history, I recognized a lot of the people and events of the space program, and it adds to the authenticity of the whole thing. It was also interesting to contemplate how the Cold War mentality of suspicion and secrecy would play out should the U.S. and Russia actually cross paths during the space race.