I got to use some of the tidbits I learned from this book this weekend, during party conversation with a friend who works at Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley. That counts as success to me! I just read three of Roach's books in quick succession, and she grew on me. At first I was slightly put off by her conversational tone which uses some of the conventions of fiction (cliff-hangers?!?), but her dogged determination to track down a source and become involved in the research by becoming a subject herself has endeared her to me. Her tone does make me skeptical of the quality of the research she cites, but she certainly is entertaining!

Here are a couple of snippets:
"Hydromedusa tectifera are, like post-war Nazis, native to Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil."(91)

"In the words of some academic I can't name because I've lost the first page of his paper, 'Personal hygiene as practiced in the U.S. today is largely a cultural fetish, actively promoted by those with commercial interests.'"(202)

"Bed-rest studies are a modern-day debtor's prison."(216)"Zero-gravity excretion is not entirely a joking matter. The simple act of urination can, without gravity, become a medical emergency requiring catheterization and embarrassing radio consults with flight surgeons."(269)

"Because of strict size and weight limits, space food technologists were preoccupied with "caloric density": packing the most nutrition and energy into the smallest volume of food. (Polar explorers, facing similar constraints and caloric demands but lacking government research budgets, pack sticks of butter.)"(288)