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!