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

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

by Mary Roach (Goodreads Author)

3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 · rating details · 14,438 ratings · 2,113 reviews

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 weirdn...more

Hardcover, 334 pages

Published August 2nd 2010 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published January 1st 2010)

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May 25, 2012 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, science, 2006-2010, ebooks, audiobook, humor-and-satire

Space…the final frontier:

where intrepid heroes break free from the mortal bonds of Mother Earth to experience such singular marvels as:

1. Fecal popcorning (definition forthcoming);
2. Condom-shaped urinal devices (with different sizes for, um, different sizes);
3. Weightless Flight Regurgitation Phenomenon (Hint: turns out gravity is a vital part of both swallowing food and keeping it locked down in the tummy);
4. The pleasures, subject to NASA regulations, of Zero-G copulation; and
5. The breat...more

99 likes · like · see review

Apr 30, 2013 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: 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...more

28 likes · like · see review

May 24, 2012 Carol rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

An exploration of the US space program, and how it's dealt with many of the everyday biological issues we take for granted (washing, eating, urinating). I learned a lot more of the early space program than I expected, but it was very palatable due to Roach's inclusion of either direct interview or historical quotes from astronauts and scientists. I never really thought about the extent to which astronauts sacrifice their personal privacy; she has a hysterical transcript from Mission Control aski...more

12 likes · like · see review

Mar 10, 2011 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: blinded-me-with-science, non-fiction, space

I’m a big space geek and have spent countless hours reading or watching documentaries about manned space flight. I’ve seen a space shuttle launch and been through the Kennedy Space Center a couple of times. I went and saw the traveling exhibit of Gus Grissom’s capsule that was retrieved from the ocean floor and refurbished. So I thought I knew something about NASA and astronauts.

However, I’d never heard the phrase ’fecal popcorning’ before.

These are the kind of tidbits you get in Packing for Mar...more I’m a big space geek and have spent countless hours reading or watching documentaries about manned space flight. I’ve seen a space shuttle launch and been through the Kennedy Space Center a couple of times. I went and saw the traveling exhibit of Gus Grissom’s capsule that was retrieved from the ocean floor and refurbished. So I thought I knew something about NASA and astronauts.

However, I’d never heard the phrase ’fecal popcorning’ before.

These are the kind of tidbits you get in Packing for Mars. Mary Roach takes a light hearted but fascinating look at all the research and projects that go into putting and keeping people in space. This isn’t about the rockets or the life support systems, it’s about the seemingly more mundane stuff like hygiene, the effects of isolation, long-term health risks, time management, safety devices, nutrition and human waste disposal. (Actually, way more about the waste disposal than I really wanted to know. Which is where the fecal popcorning came into it. Thanks for that, NASA!)

This stuff may seem trivial, but as Roach illustrates when it comes to living in a sealed zero-gravity environment nothing is trivial or easy. Something as simple as trying to get some exercise to prevent the deterioration of bone mass involves countless hours of study on earth, including a research center where subjects are paid thousands of dollars to spend a month in bed. (Read the fine print before you rush to sign up. It's not quite as good as it sounds.)

Roach strikes the perfect tone of treating the various subjects seriously while still injecting a lot of humor when it’s called for. She’s also willing to do far more than I would for a book including drinking her own recycled urine and using the space toilet trainer that has a camera in it so that astronauts can see parts of themselves that no person was meant to see as they orient themselves to do a *ahem* docking maneuver. (Seriously, there’s a lot of poop in this book.)

While reading it, I kept thinking of the argument that’s been made that putting people into space is dangerous and wasteful. So much of what’s done becomes just about keeping the astronauts alive that the science tends to get lost. Especially considering what’s been accomplished with far less money on projects like the Hubble telescope and the Mars rovers. However, Roach has a short but passionate argument at the end where she outlines why she thinks all of this is so cool and necessary, and why people should go to Mars. And you know what? She sold me.

Entertaining, informative and filled with funny stories and bits of trivia, I enjoyed this one a lot. But it’s got more poop than a Jonathan Franzen novel so beware if you’re squeamish.(less)

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Dec 28, 2011 Petra X rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: medicine-science

Note: the dolphin-sex thing appears to be a hoax. Shame that. I like the idea of space sex having to be a threesome.

Why the Space Program Costs so Much. Because its run by a load of backward-thinking dickheads, contrary to what you might think.

Mary Roach seems to have an obsession with poo. I did actually want to know about toilet facilities in space, but not two-chapters worth of knowledge. Similarly a chapter about sex, although no-one apart from one Russian wanker (literally) actually admits...more Note: the dolphin-sex thing appears to be a hoax. Shame that. I like the idea of space sex having to be a threesome.

Why the Space Program Costs so Much. Because its run by a load of backward-thinking dickheads, contrary to what you might think.

Mary Roach seems to have an obsession with poo. I did actually want to know about toilet facilities in space, but not two-chapters worth of knowledge. Similarly a chapter about sex, although no-one apart from one Russian wanker (literally) actually admits to having it at all. The author does make the point though that weightlessness might make union difficult unless one employed a third person to push the two together, much like dolphins apparently do in the equally weightless medium of water.

I wanted to know much more about questions the author chose not to address to do with food, leisure time Do they watch movies, read books or just go for a stroll? How did they do their hair, did it grow faster or slower on the space station? Did they grow food of any kind? What about insects - did any of those find themselves on a trip to space and what happened to them if they did? Loads of things...

What I did learn was that anything built for space is subject to one restriction - it must be as small and light as possible as each extra pound costs thousands of dollars in the extra thrust needed to send it into space. However, there are certain taboos that cannot be overcome and the governments of both the USA and Russia are willing to spend out all the extra money in the world to make sure that men, as ever, not matter how fake it is, reign supreme.

Women are smaller, lighter and consequently generally eat less food, drink less water and breathe less air so naturally they should be the astronauts. NASA could raise only one objection to women in space which obviously must have been solved by now, as there are female astronauts, that urine droplets do not separate from the genitals and pubic hair 'cleanly' as they do in men. I'm not joking. Have they never heard of http://www.thisnext.com/topic-female-... or couldn't they invent one? So essentially the whole space program would be much more cost-effective if women were astronauts and men, unless they were quite little, stayed home and looked after the babies. But we couldn't have that, could we? American values count for more!(less)

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Jun 09, 2011 Cassy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: from-leo, physical-own, event-met-author, 2011, non-fiction-general, region-elsewhere, theme-humor

There was a rule in my house growing up: no talking about “bodily functions”. When my older sister would start going on about how she clogged the toilet or an episode of smelly burps, my very Southern mother would intervene. “Jill, there will no discussion of bodily functions at this dinner table. Would anyone like more peach cobbler?”

Mary Roach would make an interesting dinner guest at my parents’ house. Her book is overflowing with bodily functions: vomit, body odor, pooping/peeing, and sex i...more

21 likes · like · see review

Aug 25, 2012 Trudi rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012-reads, audiobook, non-fiction, thinky-books, laugh-out-loud, stephen-made-me-do-it

3.5 stars

***I'm reposting this review in honor of Neil Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) who died today at the age of 82.

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." --Neil Armstrong

Well...that was...interesting. This book is so thoroughly researched. The amount of painstaking detail used to describe the epic sublime of space right down to the microscopic level of doing your "business" in zero gravity is impressive to say the least. As a side-effect though, I did fi...more

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Jan 22, 2011 David rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: humor, science, audiobook

There's a bit of space science in this book, but it's mostly a humorous, immensely scatalogical romp through the space program. By reading this book, you will gain a treasure trove of trivia, ranging from astronaut food, defecation, odors, nausea, to the earliest, non-human astronauts who were shot up into space on rockets. You will learn the real reason why women were not enlisted as astronauts in the early days of NASA, which turns out to be the exact same reason why Russians did include women...more

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May 27, 2012 Will Byrnes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, science, comedy-satire, brain-candy

Maybe she could have titled the book The Right Stiff.

I needed to have tissues handy while reading Mary Roach’s latest. No, it is not because it made me sad, but because I was laughing so hard my eyes were gushing. Mary Roach has had that effect on me before. I have read two of her books. Stiff and Spook are greatly entertaining. She has a sense of humor that encompasses a pre-adolescent affinity for the scatological. OK, she likes fart jokes. Blast off, Mary.

She has an appreciation for the absur...more Maybe she could have titled the book The Right Stiff.

I needed to have tissues handy while reading Mary Roach’s latest. No, it is not because it made me sad, but because I was laughing so hard my eyes were gushing. Mary Roach has had that effect on me before. I have read two of her books. Stiff and Spook are greatly entertaining. She has a sense of humor that encompasses a pre-adolescent affinity for the scatological. OK, she likes fart jokes. Blast off, Mary.

She has an appreciation for the absurd and an impressive capacity for finding it.

This sign says REDUCED GRAVITY OFFICE. I know what is in there, but even so, I have to stand for a moment and indulge my imagination, through which coffee pots are floating and secretaries drift here and there like paper airplanes. Or better still, an organization devoted to the taking of absolutely nothing seriously.

She seems to write with actual glee when reporting on the frequently vomitous results of weightlessness, and her tales of head-case astronauts playing gruesome practical jokes while in orbit had me weeping with laughter.

Yet through all the laughter there is considerable payload to be had in Roach’s books. One can gain here, among other things, an appreciation for just how little was known about the effect of space flight on humans (or chimps) before we followed the Soviets into orbit. There is info on the design of spacecraft seating, and scary details about how the human body reacts to high-G acceleration, and scarier, deceleration, also why it is better to be on rather than below deck when confronting seasickness. Your eyes will widen and you will find yourself saying “really? Who knew?” Apparently Mary Roach did, or at least does now, and shares her acquired knowledge with the rest of us.

If this book does not deter you from your lifelong desire to become an astronaut (an early career fantasy of mine), there is no hope for you at all, and you should seek counseling.

You may not leak bodily products, tears or worse, while reading Packing For Mars but be sure to keep a hankie or some tissues handy, just in case.
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Sep 23, 2010 Trevor rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, psychology, science

I’ve read two other Roach books and have really loved them. They tick all of the boxes – they are witty, wise, fascinatingly interesting and written by someone with an eye that unfailingly spots human foibles. The beauty of her writing is that rather than pointing and laughing, she embrace our foibles and makes us fell all the more human because of them.

Do you know that feeling you get when you read someone and think, ‘God, I would really love to meet you, just to listen to you talk?’ Well, Ms...more I’ve read two other Roach books and have really loved them. They tick all of the boxes – they are witty, wise, fascinatingly interesting and written by someone with an eye that unfailingly spots human foibles. The beauty of her writing is that rather than pointing and laughing, she embrace our foibles and makes us fell all the more human because of them.

Do you know that feeling you get when you read someone and think, ‘God, I would really love to meet you, just to listen to you talk?’ Well, Ms Roach is one of those authors for me.

This one starts slow – she should have cut maybe the first chapter or so. In fact, it starts so slowly that I was afraid I was witnessing the loss of one of my favourite writers. But then she gets into her stride when she starts talking about the sorts of things you’ve always wondered about space flight but were too afraid to ask.

At least, this fear is something finding out about the inconveniences of space flight is something I’ve only just discovered. I was excitedly telling my mother about this book the other day when she said something that really surprised me. I was telling her about the difficulties of defecating in space and she said, “Why would anyone want to know about that?” Her saying this stopped me in my tracks. It had never occurred to me that someone might not want to know about that. Just as the difficulties of sex in space (given Newton’s third law of motion – equal and opposite motion and all that) mean that thrusting can have the undesired effect of pushing the object of your lust off away from you – you can calculate how fast they will move away by using F=ma. It is all a matter of coming and going, I guess.

How could you not be interested in the problems zero gravity present to your bladder? Or that the bag you defecate into also needs antibacterial cream mashed through it before it can be disposed of thoughtfully. A friend of mine once called the bags used for picking up dog droppings ‘little hand warmers’ – this is even more true in space.

This is a look at the all-too-human sides of space exploration and some of the proposals to deal with issues space exploration presents – Muslim prayer times, for example. These are exactly the sorts of things I would never think to think about. I love how obvious some of the solutions to these seemingly intractable problems have turned out to be.

Who would think of putting a camera in a toilet bowl to help train for the best sitting position? And who wouldn’t expect the film thus made not to be viewed inappropriately?

The book looks at some of the crazier myths that have surrounded NASA, like the masturbating chimp story that seems to have been completely fabricated. Although, while we’re on the topic of masturbation, I have to admit that I was surprised that people have actually asked cosmonauts if they masturbated in space.

I really enjoyed this book and am prepared to admit that perhaps that makes me strange. I’ve never been all that interested in space travel, at least, not since I was a kid – in fact, I can probably say I’ve been even less interested in space travel in my adult life than I have been in that other standard childhood fascination, dinosaurs. However, this isn’t really about space travel, it is about putting people in remarkably inconvenient situations and then watching to see how they cope. A lot of the coping they need to do involves abandoning social taboos we take utterly for granted. Defecating while sitting beside a work colleague, for example, would surely prove a challenge for most of us. It is remarkable how well people do cope with these challenges and wonderful to hear about the ingenuity that is applied to solving these issues.

Don’t let the start of this one put you off, this really is the right stuff.
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Jul 01, 2012 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jennifer by: Cassy

Shelves: borrowed, favorites, 2012, saw-author-2011

"As a child, science was my favorite subject, especially space. I swore to anyone who would listen that I was the next Sally Ride. I wanted to know everything I could about each planet, so I read voraciously. I remember sitting cross-legged in my parents’ living room with an old set of encyclopedias. I knew the most trivial facts about our solar system — down to each planet’s mass and distance from earth. I remember entering a school science fair with a solar system model that I had worked very

...more

"As a child, science was my favorite subject, especially space. I swore to anyone who would listen that I was the next Sally Ride. I wanted to know everything I could about each planet, so I read voraciously. I remember sitting cross-legged in my parents’ living room with an old set of encyclopedias. I knew the most trivial facts about our solar system — down to each planet’s mass and distance from earth. I remember entering a school science fair with a solar system model that I had worked very hard on. I wanted everyone to know all the information I did, so instead of highlighting a few interesting facts about each planet, I included all the facts I could find. That was my first serious research project, and it was also my first experience trying to share information that I felt was fascinating with other people."

Above is an excerpt from my graduate school application (apparently it was good enough they let me in, but that’s a different story...). Space and space travel still to this day fascinates me. I love it, and I loved this book. Mary Roach pushes the envelope in every way possible. No topic is taboo: Astronaut selection; the effects of isolation, inactivity, and cramped spaces; weightlessness to multiple g-forces; eating, pooping, flatulence, sex, and hygiene; the possibility of surviving a bailout at 17,000 mph; the endless testing that goes along with space travel and trying to be prepared for everything. I could go on...

Roach is clever, curious, and a tenacious researcher in topics that interest her (she isn’t, after all, a scientist — she has a liberal arts degree). She delivers her findings with amazing wit and candor. I think one of my favorite parts of the book was reading the footnotes! Roach mines her sources mercilessly. She is undoubtedly a very front-and-center narrator who has had the added bonus of being a participant – or only insofar as someone grounded on Earth can take part in her subject matter. Hey, where do I get a ticket for a parabolic flight?

I am also not a scientist (physics? biology? wha?) or a psychologist, but her easy "conversational" writing style presented things in plain "fact" form, and I appreciated that it wasn’t dumbed down and Roach was tasteful in the amount of technical writing that she used. John Charles called her an "explainer." This book really isn't about upcoming Mars missions and preparations to undertake them. While she addresses that (or more like a Mars mission is insanely difficult), I think the subtitle "The Curious Science of Life in the Void" is far more apropos to Roach’s aim with this book in speaking to space travel and it's unique challenges.

I saw Roach deliver a lecture hosted by the Space Center Lecture Series in April 2011 (information about Roach and a video of that lecture can be found here) in Houston before I read the book. I was interested in the topic, a friend was going, so hey! Perhaps I had more insight going in to reading the book than someone just picking it up. Roach asked "How many of you here have some sort of connection to NASA?" Every single hand went up except mine and the two people I had arrived at the lecture with. I was sitting in a room full of experts – NASA researchers, engineers, scientists, subcontractors, and they enjoyed her lecture just as much as I did. Roach does her research and does it very, very well. In fact, she ended up interviewing her interviewer, who was none other than John Charles, one of her book’s sources! She was candid about how she conducted her research (and her emails, hundreds of them). She would not give up until she had the answers she was looking for (she used the phrase "serial pest"). I can’t imagine what her husband is like (I think I would have had a problem with recycled urine in my fridge too).

What’s up next for Roach? She remained tight-lipped about the content but revealed that her newest book will be entitled Gulp. Whatever it’s about... It’s a sure bet to be interesting.
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Dec 14, 2010 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of the humor inherent in science.

Recommended to Richard by: Down to a Science Science Café

Shelves: funny, non-fiction, science, bookclub

Mary Roach now has a lock on a certain kind of book. Science is her beat, and her shtick is to make it funny —often hilariously funny. But be forewarned: her take on “funny” means she is going to violate any taboo that gets in the way of making you cringe and groan at the same time you laugh.

In her first book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife , she did the topic as funny-but-creepy, and hadn’t yet glommed on to her now-predictable gross-out brand of humor.

That came in brilliantly with her s...more Mary Roach now has a lock on a certain kind of book. Science is her beat, and her shtick is to make it funny — often hilariously funny. But be forewarned: her take on “funny” means she is going to violate any taboo that gets in the way of making you cringe and groan at the same time you laugh.

In her first book, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife , she did the topic as funny-but-creepy, and hadn’t yet glommed on to her now-predictable gross-out brand of humor.

That came in brilliantly with her second book, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers . Now you could get science done as hilarious and creepy and gross!

She dropped the creepy and replaced it with mildly titillating in her third (and still my favorite), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex . But definitely still hilarious and gross.

In Packing for Mars , she’s tightened her focus. No more creepy, no more titillating, just funny in that juvenile way of hers. She asks the questions that any “mature” adults would never dare ask, and then begs for the juicy details. I’m sure many of the people she interviews are non-plussed at how to respond; those that don't know her previous work probably think she’s a kook. She appears to be okay with that.

As usual, much of her funniest asides come in the form of footnotes. Here’s one, from the chapter on NASA’s research on how to best, er, replicate what toilets do in the absence of gravity. It turns out that NASA has saved the “output” of astronauts for years...

Astronaut specimens from the Skylab and Apollo eras are still around, in freezers on the top floor of a windowless high-security building at Houston's Johnson Space Center—the one that houses NASA's collection of (non-biological) moon rocks. “I’m not sure what our inventory of excreta from Apollo is right now,” John Charles told me. “Forty years of freezing, with occasional thaws due to power outages during hurricanes, may have reduced them to mere vestiges of their former glory.” They were there as of 1996, because planetary biologist Ralph Harvey stumbled onto them when he got lost taking a group of VIPs on a tour. “Back then all the doors opened to the same code,” he recalls. “I opened this one door and it was almost like the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. There were these rows of long, low freezers. They all had a little light on them that’s blinking, and a temperature readout, and a piece of tape with the astronaut’s name. I’m like, Shit, they stored the astronauts in there! and I quickly got the people out. I found out later that was where they stored the astronaut feces and urine.” Harvey can’t recall the room number. “You have to stumble onto it, that’s the only way you can find it. It’s like Narnia.”

• • •

See the review at the New York Times: Astral Bodies (August 6, 2010).

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Sep 24, 2012 Sunil rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

In the wake of the Curiosity landing and Neil Armstrong's death, I was very interested in Mary Roach's take on space travel, and what I discovered was this:

Space travel suuuuuuuuuucks.

Man was not meant to go to space, you guys. Roach covers the many, many ways our bodies are simply not equipped to deal with zero-gravity, not to mention long-term space travel, and the many, many ways NASA has found to get around those limitations. She talks to astronauts and NASA scientists directly, and she also...more In the wake of the Curiosity landing and Neil Armstrong's death, I was very interested in Mary Roach's take on space travel, and what I discovered was this:

Space travel suuuuuuuuuucks.

Man was not meant to go to space, you guys. Roach covers the many, many ways our bodies are simply not equipped to deal with zero-gravity, not to mention long-term space travel, and the many, many ways NASA has found to get around those limitations. She talks to astronauts and NASA scientists directly, and she also does plenty of research, quoting memoirs and research papers, to put together a picture of the rigorous requirements to become an astronaut, the training program, the rules and regulations, and what it's like to be in space. And, mostly, it suuuuuuuucks. Except for the part where seeing Earth from space is fucking amazing and gives you space euphoria.

A lot of Roach's popular appeal stems from her sense of humor, which is amply present in her writing and footnotes (and Sandra Burr is a natural fit for her voice). But it reaches into her research as well: Roach asks the questions everyone wants to know the answers to but is afraid to ask. Oh, you'll hear about a masturbating chimp, masturbating astronauts, space vomit, space poop, space copulation, and all sorts of other things you won't find on the NASA website. She's the ask-that girl: it's really amusing when she catches people off-guard. Other times, her subjects are more than happy to be completely frank about pooping in space.

One reason this book is better than Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex is that Roach clearly respects her subjects, as well as her subject. Because space travel is inherently a more serious topic than sex research, there is less sense that Roach isn't taking things very seriously. I felt that she was genuinely interested in her topic and she was truly in awe of what science had been able to do.

Overall, I found Packing for Mars to be an incredibly fascinating look at space travel and zero-gravity, full of humorous asides and amusing mission transcripts. I highly recommend it for anyone who plans to take a trip to the moon.(less)

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Dec 17, 2012 Jason added it

Shelves: read-2012

The negative thoughts I have about this book stem from its shallowness. You aren't going to learn a great deal, unless you are relatively unaware of space travel or its history, and what you do learn is going to be pretty thin. Compared to a popular writer such as Bill Bryson, Roach is less able to give large swaths of information that is moderately complete and gives one a moderately firm grasp on things.

But this doesn't matter. This is a fun, well-researched, very funny book. It looks at spac...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobooks, non-fiction

Mary Roach is hilarious in everything she writes. She has this amazing ability to boil a particular topic down in such a way that I find myself learning so much more about it than I ever thought I wanted to know, but am laughing so hard, that it's not at all like work. Her author's notes are especially great.

In general, whether she's talking about cadavers or about space travel, I think she relies somewhat on gross-out techniques and the completely absurd. In this case there was a lot of discus...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Margaret Sankey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Have you ever wondered how NASA and other space agencies thought through the non-glamorous realities of space travel (boredom, vomit, bad smells, space psychosis)? Thankfully, there's someone to track this down and reveal the deep and presumably hideously expensive research from prison experiments (on ""non-optimal long-duration hygiene""), submarine crews (after long deployments, one crew wandered around a park rolling in grass and touching tree bark until spotting a woman with a stroller and f...more

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Feb 03, 2011 Kristin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Finally finished!

This was a really interesting book! It's kindof a behind-the-scenes, documentary-type book about astonaut life. The insane tests they have to pass to become one, nausea in weighlessness, how to go to the bathroom in space, even a chapter on sex in space- weird. Skip that one and the monkey chapter my sensitive friends.

I was so fascinated by the information. So many things I never thought about! I wondered as a read, what was is about astronauts that causes them to be such celeb...more

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Dec 16, 2010 Margaret Heller rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science

If Mary Roach wrote a book about the science of watching paint dry, I would happily read it. She exhibits a great and infectious joy in learning about her subjects, no matter what they are. Roach's approach is a healthy dose of prurience combined with unabated glee to dig into the heart of the topic. She experienced weightlessness, drank recycled urine, visited the space toilet camera, and many other adventures. The process of research comes out in her sly and clever footnotes and descriptions o...more

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Oct 26, 2010 Christiana rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-non-fic

I keep making jokes about this book and I being in a relationship because I'm weird like that. If this book and I WERE in a relationship, it would be a pretty good one. It teaches me new things, I have insight into people from spending time with it, there was some unexpected surprises. I just really wanted to be in book lust instead, not wined and dined, you know? Like, one day I'll look at this book and realize we're in love, but it's just not happening right this second, so we have to part way...more

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Jun 09, 2011 Rusty rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audio-book, non-fiction, read-in-2011

I chose this book more out of an appreciation of the author than the subject matter. I thought that "Stiff" was almost a five star book for the first 2/3rds. This time around, it felt like Roach was really going out of her way to explore the random and wacky aspects of space travel. Trying a little too hard. Regardless, it's pretty interesting.

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Sep 01, 2010 A. Gamble rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: advanced-reading-copies, first-reads

First read = Happy Birthday to me from Goodreads! (And a hardcover happy birthday at that.) Mary Roach is one of my favorites and I have been eagerly awaiting another of her books since devouring the other three last year.

This book will make you realize astronauts are people, too. The most mundane needs must be analyzed by many scientists in order to make a mission successful. Everything from what to eat to how to poop is addressed. After reading about the conditions astronauts face, I admire t...more

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Nov 04, 2010 Gloriavirtutisumbra rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction-old-and-new

I'm always listening to an audiobook on the side of all the books I'm attempting to read at any given time, and this week it was Packing for Mars. OH wow. This one is a delight!! I could not stop bursting out in laughter and pounding on tables while listening to the chapter on 'Separation Anxiety' (just read or listen to it and you will be so glad you did). Her humor is a gift to subjects that would be unbearable without it. Please continue to write more honestly and wryly than anyone else, Mary...more

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Jan 16, 2012 Kira rated it 3 of 5 stars

If you haven’t read anything by Mary Roach, I’d start with Stiff, simply because I remember that book changing my entire perspective on science writing. But if you’re already a fan, or are simply interested in (and not terrified by) space, Packing for Mars is pretty awesome. As Roach explains, many of today’s technologies—bulletproof vests, artificial limbs, solar panels, invisible braces, Carnation breakfast formula—were born of aerospace innovation. We’ve long been fascinated by what happens t...more

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Apr 19, 2013 SmarterLilac rated it 4 of 5 stars

Terrific.

I didn't think I'd like Mary Roach--I read a bit of Stiff a few years back and wasn't too taken with her--but this book is infectious. Thoroughly researched and fascinatingly morbid, Roach covers the ins and outs of the many bizarre facets of space travel. While it's one of those things I have never in the slightest wanted to do, she makes cruising around in space irresistible even to a scardey cat like me.

I don't think I'd make it, though. One of my favorite parts of Packing for Mars w...more

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Apr 12, 2013 Corey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Interested in vomit, small spaces, food ruination or fecal photograph? If you said "Yes?" to any of these questions then perhaps you should seek professional help, but while you're sitting in the waiting room, take Packing for Mars with you.

My first Mary Roach book brought home by my librarian girlfriend after she decide that journalistic narrative non-fiction was currently my favorite genre; Packing hooked the 8 year old boy in me so immediately that I asked to pick up the rest of her books. He...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Joel rated it 5 of 5 stars

A book about how space exploration affects its human participants, both physically and psychologically. As pop-science books go, this is excellent; Roach manages to perfectly balance between 'informative' and 'entertaining'. In the informative bits, she mainly allows the astronauts, scientists, and assorted experts to tell the story; she quotes liberally from interviews, memoirs, and even mission transcripts. The entertainment comes equally from the amusing anecdotes she unearths and her own une...more A book about how space exploration affects its human participants, both physically and psychologically. As pop-science books go, this is excellent; Roach manages to perfectly balance between 'informative' and 'entertaining'. In the informative bits, she mainly allows the astronauts, scientists, and assorted experts to tell the story; she quotes liberally from interviews, memoirs, and even mission transcripts. The entertainment comes equally from the amusing anecdotes she unearths and her own unerring ability to locate and point out the ridiculous aspects of every situation. Many of the more amusing passages come during asides that are only tangentially related to the subject matter under discussion, and are thus relegated to footnotes. Frankly, this book has the greatest footnotes I've ever seen.

She is also remarkably shameless about pestering people involved in the space program for details about things like sex in space and space toilets. I admire that, because if I were in her place I could never have asked those things.

It's not all- or even mostly- a salacious and scatological book, though. It reports on a great number of problems and dilemmas faced by the space program over the years, many of which remain troublesome to this day. How to prevent the deterioration of the human body (particularly the bones) under long-term zero-gravity conditions. How to best protect astronauts during re-entry. How to prevent motion sickness. How to approach personal hygiene...

If I had to make a criticism, it would be about Roach's tendency to make quick, off-the-cuff references (often to pop culture) which she doesn't explain, simply assuming that her readers will get the joke. An entirely superfluous reference to 'the GEICO caveman', for instance. Not being a frequent TV watcher, I only barely dredged up a memory of the commercials she's referring to. I can't help wondering what non-American readers, or people who watch no TV at all, or readers 20 years in the future will make of that.

But, overall, that does very little to detract from the book's charm. Highly recommended.(less)

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Jan 11, 2013 Claire rated it 4 of 5 stars

A member of the book group I run in Las Vegas suggested we read something by Mary Roach. I was told that she was informative and funny, two of my favourite things in a person, so I had a look through her titles, I felt that the book group needed something a bit more science-y so I went for her book about ‘the curious science of life in space’, Packing for Mars.

I have to admit to a terribly anti-sociable habit: I fold the corners down on books’ pages. I use a bookmark to keep my place, but when I...more A member of the book group I run in Las Vegas suggested we read something by Mary Roach. I was told that she was informative and funny, two of my favourite things in a person, so I had a look through her titles, I felt that the book group needed something a bit more science-y so I went for her book about ‘the curious science of life in space’, Packing for Mars.

I have to admit to a terribly anti-sociable habit: I fold the corners down on books’ pages. I use a bookmark to keep my place, but when I find something interesting, I fold the corner down. Perhaps I think that it will somehow magically help to put that fact into my brain. Well, I don’t think I have ever folded so many corners down in one book. My favourite two-sides of page could be the part where we get facts about vomiting, The Elephant Man, gravitational pull, whales, centrifugal force and the abdominal organs of rats. It is because of things such as this that I am already in love with Roach and I will certainly be reading all her other books. I may make my book group read at least one more, too, if it turns out that they liked this one.

There are so many facts in the book, that I started to wonder if she might be making a few up. Several times she mentions a huge ‘Mars World’ resort just outside of Las Vegas, where I live. This is news to me, and I cannot find a lot about it on the internet, other than the odd article. But I forgive her, because there was a lot more money sloshing about Vegas back when she wrote this than there is now, so obviously that idea has been scrapped. Which is probably for the best, gambling in spacesuits sounds like a ridiculous way to spend your holiday.

She begins the book with a short history of space travel, from animals to humans. Then she moves on to chapters tackling each aspect of human life in space, from it’s psychological effects, to it’s more nitty-gritty physiological ones. Do not read this book if you are squeamish about bedroom or toilet matters, she does get into detail. That wasn’t the part that made me feel queasy, though, the chapter tackling the issues about “bailing from space” had my stomach doing it’s own flips. I am scared enough of quite a high balcony, so stories of ejecting from these heights are positively terrifying. Oh, and I often get motion sickness in cars, so I had lots of sympathy for the astronauts in the stories of space-vomiting, and also found the explanations very helpful.

Roach tells of of how an astronaut is chosen to do their job. The job requirements may not be what you expected them to be. Women might seem the better choice, being smaller and lighter, but then there are complications when they pee that lose them points. And to live in a tiny capsule so closely with other people you must be extremely easy-going. And your farts should be of the non-methane variety. There is so very little chance of me ever having made it through astronaut school.

This is by no means a textbook, and will never be used for a school science lesson, it meanders off-subject for a while here and there. But that illustrates one of the many weaknesses in organised education. This is exactly the sort of thing young adults should be reading, this may have made me a lot more interested in space travel as a teen, and who knows where that spark of interest may have lead?

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Jan 08, 2013 Dave marked it as to-read

Shelves: calibre, non-fiction

EDITORIAL REVIEW: 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 happen...more

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Nov 30, 2012 Eva rated it 4 of 5 stars

Started slow, and can't compete Stiff (same author), but this still turned out to be a fascinating book nonetheless.

I "read" it mostly as an audiobook, so here are limited kindle highlights:

Without gravity, the molecules would fly off into space along with the water in the oceans and the cars on the roads and you and me and Larry King and the dumpster in the In-N-Out Burger parking lot.Read more at location 940

Hydromedusa tectifera are, like post-war Nazis, native to Argentina, Paraguay, and Br...more Started slow, and can't compete Stiff (same author), but this still turned out to be a fascinating book nonetheless.

I "read" it mostly as an audiobook, so here are limited kindle highlights:

Without gravity, the molecules would fly off into space along with the water in the oceans and the cars on the roads and you and me and Larry King and the dumpster in the In-N-Out Burger parking lot.Read more at location 940

Hydromedusa tectifera are, like post-war Nazis, native to Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil.Read more at location 1001

In the words of some academic I can’t name because I’ve lost the first page of his paper... Read more at location 2318

Wolff figured it out in the 1800s by studying X-rays of infants’ hips as they transitioned from crawling to walking. “A whole new evolution of bone structure takes place to support the mechanical loads associated with walking,” said Lang. “Wolff had the great insight that form follows function.” Alas, Wolff did not have the great insight that cancer follows gratuitous X-raying with primitive nineteenth-century X-ray machines.Read more at location 2428

When he finished, he returned to acting, joining a New Hampshire theater troupe doing “children’s Macbeth,” the very thought of which alarms me.Read more at location 2484

Compressed food not only took up less stowage—which is how children and aircraft designers say “storage”—space, it was less likely to crumble.Read more at location 3355

An unusual display of syllabic restraint in journal naming. Only Gut earns my higher praise. Take note, American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics, Official Publication of the American Association of Orthodontists, Its Constituent Societies, and the American Board of Orthodontics.Read more at location 4386

The dolphin’s penis is prehensile. They can literally grasp things—including, on occasion, people who have paid to swim with the dolphins. “There have been cases in captivity when males…have gripped the person around the ankle with their penis,” said dolphin researcher Janet Mann. Mann said male dolphins have quietly been eliminated from most of the programs for this reason. If the Web site Sex with Dolphins is to be believed, females do it too. “She suddenly decided to grab my foot with her genital slit,” writes the author, going on to explain that females not only have muscular vaginal orifices but can use these muscles to “manipulate objects and carry them.” What a boon for the limbless! I wanted to ask Mann what objects dolphins have been seen to carry with their genitals, but she had by this point begun dodging my emails.Read more at location 4422
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Aug 15, 2012 Sue Pit rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Mary Roach is a science writer who knows how to make a subject accessible and delightfully interesting laced with a lot of good laugh out loud moments. She just has that knack. She really does her research and often tests out the subject matter herself if possible (providing her insights thereof). This book was noticed at the independent bookstore in Rapid City just prior to the Curiosity Rover landing on Mars and it piqued my interest as it stared out at me from the shelves as I sat perusing an...more

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About Mary Roach

Mary Roach is the author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. Her writing has appeared in such publications as Salon, GQ, Vogue, and the New York Times Magazine. She lives in Oakland, California.

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Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011

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“Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government redlining been spent on education and cancer research? It is always squandered. Let's squander some on Mars. Let's go out and play.” — 16 people liked it

“The nobility of the human spirit grows harder for me to believe in. War, zealotry, greed, malls, narcissism. I see a backhanded nobility in excessive, impractical outlays of cash prompted by nothing loftier than a species joining hands and saying “I bet we can do this.” Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government red-lining been spent on education and cancer research? It is always squandered. Let’s squander some on Mars. Let’s go out and play.” — 9 people liked it

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