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

by Mary Roach

Vexillology is the study of flags, not the study of vexing things, but in this case, either would fit.

Space doesn’t just encompass the sublime and the ridiculous. It erases the line between.

For all its fire-breathing bluster, a rocket is simply a means of delivering something—very fast and very far.

Weight is a bit of a mind-bender. I had always thought of my weight, on any given day, as a constant, a physical trait like my height or my eye color. It’s not. I weigh 127 pounds on Earth, but on the much smaller moon, whose gravitational pull is one sixth of Earth’s, I weigh about as much as a beagle. Neither weight is my real weight. There is no such thing as a real weight, only real mass. Weight is determined by gravity.

“Lateral crashes are very deadly because…” Gohmert stops. “I shouldn’t say crash.” “Landing pulse” is the preferred NASA phrasing. (NASCAR is partial to “contact.”) “NASA must train these guys,” Bolte marveled at one point. “You ask them a question and you see them pause and think through their answer.” Bolte isn’t like that. My favorite line of the day so far has been Bolte’s: “Is he leaking badly from anything major?”

In 1990, a human skull rode Space Shuttle Atlantis, kitted out with dosimeters, to help researchers determine how much radiation penetrates astronauts’ heads in low Earth orbit. Worried that the astronauts would be unnerved by their decapitated crewmate, the researchers covered the bone with pinkish plastic molded to approximate a face. “The result was far more menacing than plain bone would have been,” noted astronaut Mike Mullane.*

Windblast isn’t weather. The air isn’t rushing into you; you are rushing into it—having bailed out or ejected from an imperiled craft.

Space cuisine appealed to the American public as a novelty, but astronauts had had enough novelty for several lifetimes.

One of the things I love about manned space exploration is that it forces people to unlace certain notions of what is and isn’t acceptable. And possible. It’s amazing what sometimes gets accomplished via an initially jarring but ultimately harmless shift in thinking.