This tale is set way back in the 1970s, during the Apollo Program, and supposes that a Chinese launch might have taken place around the same time. Sputnik and Skylab were orbiting, and the three major powers were in edgy competition. FINAL ORBIT is the conclusion to the Apollo Murders trilogy, but can be read alone.

There are more than a few main strands, at least five, with occasional outside points of view. We see earnest workers in mainland China as well as Mission Control in Heuston. I did find keeping track of every thread difficult, and given this was set back in the ‘70s, there is a feeling of ‘do I really care?’ However, the segments that show a crew of astronauts encounter very genuine danger with no way for help to reach them come across as gripping and upsetting.  

A fun moment is when schoolboy enthusiasts in a high- latitude school in England register the launch of a Russian rocket before anyone else. The author Chris Hadfield tells us this kind of event really happened.

Most of the book, though, is concerned with the nitty- gritty of flying, preparing, training and launching. And, spying. Work is serious, and friendships are made that relate to the astronaut community. Kaz Zemeckis in Mission Control and his counterpart, Svetlana, on Soyuz, show us their sides of the story. Fang Guojun, aboard a new Chinese craft heading for an abandoned Skylab, provides an alternative to history. Hadfield’s characters take us through every jet make, dial and switch; it is great for enthusiasts, not so much for the casual reader of suspense stories. I guess Hadfield thought he would only write this once, and he wanted to include the whole technical picture. Not many people could do this work.  

FINAL ORBIT leaves us with the vision of Space Shuttles and international co-operation in the days to come. This has been hard won, with triumphs and tragedies. We have to feel awe at the people who would fly into the unknown with the kind of computers we’d barely recognise anymore to do their calculations. Chris Hadfield, ex-astronaut of the ISS era, is reminding us of what we expect from those about to step into rockets for the Artemis missions.