Packing for Mars, by Mary Roach

Posted by: Redhead on: March 5, 2012

• In: Mary Roach
• 18 Comments

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, by Mary Roach

published in 2010

Where I got it:  the library

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Beyond the obvious, food, water, energy, what would we need for a trip to Mars? The aeronautical engineers have already done all the math for us, they know to within a miligram exactly how much food and water can get sent up in a rocket needing how much fuel.  But what about everything else?

What about everything we take for granted down on Earth, that suddenly become much more difficult when there is little to no gravity?  What kind of clothes would you wear? how would you take a shower?  Can you eat a sandwich? Enjoy the smell of vanilla flavored cookies? What goes in must go out, so how would you go to the bathroom in zero gravity? Even worse, what if free fall makes you sick to your stomach?

Leave to to Mary Roach to find the truth, the deepest darkest details of what we need for space.  From parabololic flights on NASA’s specially outfitted military plane (known coloquially as the vomit comet) to speaking with Russian cosmonauts, polar scientists, veterenary food specialists and marine biologists, Roach finds that everything that could possibly go up in a rocket or shuttle must be tested, tested, and tested some more by folks willing to sleep for weeks or experience high end G-forces.

I heard about this book from Dark Cargo, and her review had me laughing so hard that I just had to search the thing out for myself. I read so much science fiction, I figured I might as well read a non-fiction book about the science of actually going to the stars. I’m happy to report that Packing for Mars is the easiest to digest, funniest science book I’ve ever read. If you’ve read Mary Roach before, you know her journalistic eye jumps from more detail than you ever wanted to the gross and disgusting bits that you probably never wanted. Packing for Mars is no different.  It’s not that getting to Mars is gross or disgusting, it’s that the shuttle that heads there will be filled with gross, disgusting, squishy things. And those gross squishy things are us.  I learned the hard way not to eat while reading, and I cracked up laughing about every other page.

I’m sure Roach never meant for Packing for Mars to be so funny. This is serious stuff – there is detailed not-appropriate-for-children information about the Challenger and Columbia disasters. There some difficult to read bits about early rocket disasters involving suffocation and red smears.  But there’s also that paragraph about testing zero gravity toilets on a parabolic flight requiring poop-on-demand, and let’s not forget the chapter on dolphin penises.

Did you read that last sentence twice? 😉

Space is scary and dangerous and can kill us instantaneously.  But in all that danger, there is much humor to be found in how to safely get us squishy humans up there safely.

Packing for Mars is for anyone who ever dreamed of growing up to be an astronaut, anyone who ever has ever watched NASA TV, anyone who has ever dreamed up experiencing zero gravity or seeing the Earth from the orbit of the Moon. Basically, all of us.

Tags: aeronautics, astronauts, future, Mars, science, spaceships