Tumbleweed: Six Months Living on Mir

by Shannon Lucid

In 1996 Shannon Lucid, an American astronaut, spent six months, living and working on the Russian space station Mir Tumbleweed tells the fascinating story of preparing for this flight by living and training for a year in Star City, Russia, home of the Russian Cosmonauts. She launched on the space shuttle Discovery, February 22, 1996, to join the Russian Mir crew. The original plan was for her to spend four months on Mir, but due to shuttle technical difficulties, her stay was extended to six months. During this time, she participated in the arrival and activation of Priroda, the new module that contained the US science experiments, and then carried out the US science program. During her stay on Mir, two Russian supply vehicles, Progresses, arrived, five spacewalks were performed, a Soyuz, carrying a new Russian crew arrived and her original Russian crewmates departed. After 188 days, she returned to planet Earth on the space shuttle Atlantis. Tumbleweed provides vivid details living and working in a micro gravity environment for a long duration space flight.

Genres: Space, Nonfiction

211 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 12, 2020

Reviews

[Charles Phillips · Rating 3 out of 5]

I certainly wanted to rate this book higher, in part because I know Shannon Lucid and worked closely with her on Spacelab Life Sciences-2 (Space Shuttle mission STS-58) and on the Mir program. Shannon Lucid is a wonderful person that I am very glad that I got to work with.

But the book seems to have been written and maybe even printed on someone's kitchen table. There were some duplicate paragraphs in the book and it jumped around. I was glad to hear of some of the background details that we wondered about, more about what it was like to live in "Star City" which is the Russian cosmonaut training center. I heard a LOT of stories about that place. Shannon talks about a lot of the stuff that we did and some of it seems improbable but it really happened.

This is a worthwhile book - just be ready for some quirks. If you like to hear the details about life as an astronaut, hear some of the behind the scenes stories - this is the book for you. I do wish that Shannon had (as other people could also have done) talked about how she survived after being thrown into a test pilot (VERY unforgiving!) environment and how the first female astronauts taught NASA more about how to deal with women.

[Bob Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

About A Space Station and About Different Cultures

I’ve always enjoyed stories about our exploration of space and Shannon Lucid’s story about life on the Mir station is a good one. But really just as important a story is hers about living to train in Moscow, coming to understand how different our lives are from her Russian counterparts, how differently our cultures process and use information to perform tasks, and even how differently from ours their culture sees the world.
But then, living with two male cosmonauts for six month, hampered by language inadequacy, Lucid and her colleagues learned to work and laugh together, cherishing shared humanity that birthed a lasting friendship.
This is a very good read.

[Tricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Great to read about Shannon Lucid's time on Mir.
Definitely needs some editing.