The reader's edition
Earthrise: A Canadian Astronaut's Journey Into Deep Space: the summary
John Larsen is an Alberta writer, a former navy diver and military public affairs officer, who spent three years in conversation with astronaut Jeremy Hansen to write this book. Earthrise follows Hansen from a childhood in a farming community near London, Ontario, where he dreamed of the Moon, through his years of training with the Canadian Space Agency, to his seat on NASA's Artemis II, the first crewed Artemis flight around the Moon. Much of it is told from Hansen's side of the experience: the long preparation, the crew of four, and the family waiting on the ground. Larsen presents the mission as a story about teamwork and about people staying human under pressure, and he wrote it for general readers rather than space specialists. The title points back to the Earthrise photograph taken on Apollo 8, and the book opens with a foreword by Chris Hadfield. Read a chapter at a time, with a printable action book at the end.
- John Larsen
- 2026
- 4 chapters
- 5 min read
- 9 takeaways
This is HourLife's reading of Earthrise: A Canadian Astronaut's Journey Into Deep Space, in our own words. It is not a substitute for the book.
Chapter 01
Before you start
The book in a minute
Tap a paragraph to highlight it. Turn pages with the arrows, the arrow keys, or a swipe.
John Larsen is an Alberta writer, a former navy diver and military public affairs officer, who spent three years in conversation with astronaut Jeremy Hansen to write this book. Earthrise follows Hansen from a childhood in a farming community near London, Ontario, where he dreamed of the Moon, through his years of training with the Canadian Space Agency, to his seat on NASA's Artemis II, the first crewed Artemis flight around the Moon. Much of it is told from Hansen's side of the experience: the long preparation, the crew of four, and the family waiting on the ground. Larsen presents the mission as a story about teamwork and about people staying human under pressure, and he wrote it for general readers rather than space specialists. The title points back to the Earthrise photograph taken on Apollo 8, and the book opens with a foreword by Chris Hadfield.
Below are the 9 ideas HourLife readers vote up most, each in our words with a note on what it asks of you, and then the steps that put them to work.
Chapter 02
What readers keep
The takeaways
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1
HourLife takeaway
A childhood dream is worth keeping if you are willing to feed it with years of work.
Larsen starts with a boy in a farming community near London, Ontario, who wanted to go to the Moon. The book follows how that wish became a career, one step of study, flying and training at a time. The dream mattered less than the work that kept it alive.
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2
HourLife takeaway
Being ready is mostly invisible work, done long before anyone is watching.
Hansen was picked as a Canadian Space Agency astronaut in 2009, and Artemis II was his first flight to space. The book gives real weight to the years of training in between. Those quiet years are what made the flight possible.
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3
HourLife takeaway
You may wait far longer than you planned, so build a life that keeps you ready while you wait.
Hansen was selected in 2009 and named to the Artemis II crew in 2023. That gap was full of work, not idleness. HourLife reads it as a lesson in staying prepared without knowing when, or whether, your turn will come.
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4
HourLife takeaway
No one goes to the Moon alone: the crew is the unit that succeeds or fails.
Artemis II flew four people, three NASA astronauts and Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency. Larsen tells the mission as a story of teamwork, and Hansen's crewmates sit at the centre of his experience, not in the background.
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5
HourLife takeaway
Say the important things before the big day, not after it.
Larsen has described a call with Hansen on the evening before launch, when Hansen talked about saying goodbye to his family. A real risk made those conversations unavoidable. Most of us can have them without a rocket forcing the issue.
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6
HourLife takeaway
Courage and vulnerability travel together.
Larsen has said the part of the story that reached people most was how openly the crew showed love for their families and for each other. The book does not treat fear or tenderness as flaws in a trained astronaut. They sit beside the discipline, not against it.
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7
HourLife takeaway
Distance changes what looks important.
The title points back to Earthrise, the photograph of Earth over the lunar horizon taken on Apollo 8 in 1968. Seeing the whole planet at once changed how many people thought about home. Step far enough back and many of the week's quarrels look small.
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8
HourLife takeaway
Going first means carrying other people with you.
Hansen was the one Canadian on a NASA crew, chosen to be the first non-American to travel beyond low Earth orbit. The subtitle frames him as a Canadian astronaut, with a country following from the ground. When you are the first from your group to do something, you stand for more than yourself.
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9
HourLife takeaway
A true story is built from patient listening.
Larsen wrote to the Canadian Space Agency with the idea in 2023, then spent about three years and some 300 hours in texts, calls and visits with Hansen. The result stays close to one person's experience. Long, unglamorous listening is how a writer earns that closeness.
Chapter 03
Put it to work
Your action book
Do the setup steps once, then keep the habits going. The setup changes your week; the habits keep it changed after the first good one.
The download puts this whole reading and a printable action book in one PDF: the setup checklist, then a page of real calendar days for each habit, starting on the day you choose.
Set up once
Name your Moon
Write one goal you have wanted for a long time in a single sentence. Put it where you will see it each morning.
Map the training years
List the skills the goal needs and a rough number of years to build them. Split the first year into four quarters with one focus each.
Pick a crew of three
Choose one person who keeps you honest, one who knows more than you, and one who looks after home. Tell each of them what you are attempting.
Have the before-launch talk
Before your next big step, such as a move, a new job or a hard exam, sit down with the people who will feel it most. Tell them what you are doing, why, and what you need from them.
Put the Earthrise view in sight
Set NASA's Earthrise photograph from Apollo 8 as your phone or desktop background. Let it remind you to zoom out once a day.
Keep it up
Train once a week, even when launch feels far
Book one session a week for the skill your goal needs most. Keep it on the calendar in the quiet months, when no deadline is pushing you.
Send your crew a monthly update
Once a month, send each of your three people a short note: what you did, what is stuck, and what is next.
Zoom out on Sundays
Each Sunday, write down the week's biggest worry, then ask how it will look a year from now. Cross out what will not matter.
Chapter 04
The last word
Before you go
Pick one step from the action book and do it today. An idea from a book starts to count once it changes what one ordinary day looks like.
The long wait and the short flight are one story, and the people at home are in it too.
That is the end of our reading. Where to go from here, or go back to the full Earthrise: A Canadian Astronaut's Journey Into Deep Space page.
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