Packing for Mars; The Curious Science of Life in the Void

334 pages. Illustrations. Footnotes. Time line. Bibliography. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Mary Roach (born March 20, 1959), is an American author, specializing in science and humor. She has published at least nine books,: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005) (published in some markets as Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008), Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010), My Planet: Finding Humor in the Oddest Places, The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011 (editor, 2010) Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013), and Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (2016), Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (2021, W. W. Norton & Company. Roach is noted for her curiosity and humor in addition to her research. Her many humor-laced articles in various publications over the decades include her monthly humor column, "My Planet", in Reader's Digest. Packing for Mars was also sixth on the New York Times Bestseller list. The best-selling author of Stiff and Bonk explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity. Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can't walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it's possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA's new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth. Derived from a Kirkus review: In lucid writing well-tuned to humor and absurdity, Roach tackles such topics as bowel movements in zero gravity. In fact, all the things that can and routinely do go wrong are vile—inhaling fecal dust that coats the mouth with E. coli, for instance—and few have taken the act of vomiting quite to the riotous heights as Roach. Plenty of astronauts succumbed to motion sickness in her presence, but it's a problem often ignored by reports because motion sickness is seen as a weakness, and any perceived weakness could get an astronaut bumped from a mission. The author visits with astronauts to hear about what it is like to share a confined space with another person for many days. Roach is equally adept at demystifying thorny scientific material, such as the nature of gravity and its role in our lives— especially how the lack of it thins bones, atrophies muscles, does odd things with blood vessels and the heart and is particularly uncooperative when it comes to sex. There is much good fun with—and a respectful measure of awe at—the often crazy ingenuity brought to the mundane matters of surviving in a place not meant for humans. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated].…