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One thing you learn about astronauts is they really think a lot of themselves. Linenger has a lot of drive and isn't shy about letting you know about it. Nor letting you know that he knows other people know about it.
This book is basically a memoir about his mission, plus some autobiographical stuff before that. Very little technical detail. At the same time, also little detail about his Russian crewmates and how they got along. He only described their relationship very generally.
He did go on several times about how poorly the Russian space organization supported their cosmonauts in space. Basically, they were incredibly unrealistic. And almost criminally negligent.
For example, they tried to schedule the crew's tasks in five minute intervals. This, despite the fact that the ground personel no longer had accurate information on what items were on board the station, nor how anything was configured. Even the electrical schematic was years out of date and apparently wasn't even close to accurate. But the pay system used by the Russian space agency coerced the Russian commander to attempt to stick to the schedule even if it was absurdly optimistic.
Linenger, being an American and not officially in the Russian chain of command, was able to take his tasks for the entire day and organize them how he felt was the most efficient. So he was able to get more done and wasn't constantly frustrated by trying to stick to a rigid schedule that made no sense.
Another example was when they tried to fix one of the plumbing systems. If I remember rightly, they had a glycol system probably used to help regulate heat throughout the station. Over the years the system had corroded and developed many leaks in the older modules. It had gotten to the point that it was unfixable. Some of the leaks were in places the crew literally couldn't get to. Yet, almost weekly the ground staff asked them to open up the valves to those modules and try to isolate the leaks. The pipes would leak and then they'd have this glycol mixture in the atmosphere for days. When asked if it was dangerous, the Russians said no. When Linenger asked NASA to check on it they said the only info they could find was that an eight hour exposure to low levels didn't appear dangerous. But there was no data on exposure for days to very high levels.
The most egregious recklessness came when they tried to dock a Progress module manually. Basically, there was a single point of failure. If the commander wasn't getting a good image from the camera there was nothing he could do. On Linenger's flight the Progress barely missed the station. On the next flight, after changing essentially nothing in the procedures and hardware, the Progress hit the station.
Finally, Linenger talked about the fire. One interesting aspect was the Boy Who Cried Wolf attitude they had developed. Apparently, the master alarm aboard the Mir sounded at least once a day. So when Linenger heard it on this occasion he finished whatever task he was working on and calmly went to the main node to see what was happening. That's when he saw the smoke from the fire. He described how much trouble they had getting the fire extinguishers onto the fire, and that they had no noticable effect. Possibly they cooled the fire just enough that it didn't melt through the far bulkhead. But apparently it was a very near thing.
I remember the news reports at the time. The Russian space agency reported a minor fire that was quickly extinguished and was never dangerous. That's even what they told NASA. It wasn't until Linenger got his next opportunity to speak to a NASA rep that they learned the truth.
When people's lives are at stake, it's criminally stupid to try to pretend away the truth. The Russian officials involved in that deception should be ashamed of themselves.
Obviously, there's a lot more. Mostly more superficial than I would have liked. He glossed over his training in Russia. It was more of the same as above. Not enough basic training materials, and much of what they did have was out of date. Very rigid adherence to training methods and materials that were clearly ineffective. Some of this was due to budget problems, but much was due to a culture that never questioned the status quo. He mentioned how the Russian ground crew would often commandeer his monthly few minutes of radio time with his wife to talk to the station commander about was usually trivial matters.
On Mighty's Total Book Value Scale, Paperback. Not bad, but it glossed over so much that it wasn't as interesting as I had hoped.
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