Longtime NASA shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane has written a new book, Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut (Scribner 2006) and, based on this Keith Cowing/SpaceRef.com review, the book appears to be a rollicking good time:

This is not a kiss and tell book (although it gets close on several occasions). Mullane doesn’t mince words and repeats what one person said to another (to the best of his recollection). This includes multiple times when Mullane said/did something dumb and regrettable. I suspect that the people depicted learned long ago what Mullane thought of them – so the tales contained in this book may not be a surprise to those folks – but they may find reading about these episodes to be a bit unsettling.
This book certainly shows a side of NASA that NASA Public Affairs Office would rather not have people read. NASA focuses (with some obsession) upon the positives, on the strength of the corps and its members. No flaws, no shortcomings – no weaknesses allowed. The net result is a homogeneous generic notion of what an astronaut is. While there may be a few people in the astronaut corps that come close to matching this image, Mullane smashes that generic notion. In more ways than outsiders might imagine, astronauts are just like the rest of us in more ways that NASA PAO would have you think.

Yes, there were juvenile delinquents in the astronaut corps (at least while Mullane was there). Indeed, he often groups this subset of the astronaut corps (with him as one of the prime practitioners) as having originated on “Planet Arrested Development” (“Planet AD”). Given that many of his fellow astronauts were also stuffed shirts, his description of his gang is as refreshing as it is irreverent.
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The culture Tom Wolfe described during Mercury program was still quite evident at NASA as Mullane’s class showed up for work. But the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo “right stuff” culture was fading – transitioning – into a new configuration. This class represented the collision between post WW II fighter pilots and post Vietnam era baby boomers.
As mentioned before, this new class was not with out its pranksters and risk takers. Mullane notes one harrowing (and after the fact, enjoyable) flight in the back seat of a T-38 piloted by astronaut Fred Gregory. Mullane describes how Gregory took the jet “inside” the Grand Canyon. Gregory went on to become Deputy Administrator of NASA – but before that he was the Associate Administrator for Safety and Mission Assurance – an irony not lost on Mullane.
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Mike Mullane’s book is a perfect intersection of the risks and fears, joys and fulfillment, strengths and weaknesses, and the human cost to family and friends of exploring space. It is not to be missed.

Check out the entire review.