Packing for Mars Quotes

“Most of them students from the nearby University of Dayton...”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Could those sound waves shake apart your organs? NASA did testing on this back in the sixties, to be sure, as one infrasound expert told me, “that they didn’t deliver jam to the moon.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Borman much later admitted that he was, as Cernan wrote in his memoir, “sick as a dog* all the way to the moon.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“I applied to be a subject in a simulated Mars mission. I made it past the first round of cuts and was told that someone from the European Space Agency would call me for a phone interview later in the month. The call came at 4:30 A.M., and I did not take care to hide my irritation. I realized later that it had probably been a test, and I had failed it.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Funny thing happened on the way to the moon: not much,” wrote Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan. “Should have brought some crossword puzzles.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Seriously hairy shit was going down on a regular basis.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Space Shuttle toilets have always been mounted on the floor, but you would not call them normal. The original shuttle toilet bowl featured a set of 1,200 rpm Waring blender blades positioned a brief 6 inches below the sitter’s anatomy. The macerator would pulp the feces and tissue—meaning, if all went well, the paper, not the scrotal, variety—and fling it to the sides of a holding tank.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“The Johnson Space Center “potty cam,” as it is more casually known, is an astronaut training aid. It provides a vivid, arresting perspective on something you’ve had intimate contact with all your life but never really seen. Perhaps not unlike viewing one’s home planet from space for the first time. Positioning is critical because the opening to a Space Shuttle toilet is 4 inches across, as opposed to the 18-inch maw we are accustomed to on Earth.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“I remember watching Morin walk away from me, the endearing gait and the butt that got lubed for science, and thinking, “Oh my god, they’re just people.” NASA”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Is it possible to bolster one’s hip bones by doing some type of controlled fall? Here”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“A four-person crew will, over the course of three years, generate somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand pounds of feces. In the ominous words of sixties space nutritionist Emil Mrak, “The possibility of reuse must be considered.” Sometime”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“It is assumed that a man will fit one of the three sizes available in the condom-style urine collection device hose attachment inside the EVA suit. To avoid mishaps caused by embarrassed astronauts opting for L when they are really S, there is no S. “There is L, XL, and XXL,”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“The pole is nonconductive, enabling the savvy rescuer to save a life without joining the growing conga line of electrocution victims.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“That was the mindset that propelled one of the AMRL’s least popular liquid diets into a long and lucrative career as Carnation Instant Breakfast.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Space agencies keep a firm grip on their public image, and it's less troublesome for employees and contractors to say no to someone like me than to take their chances and see what I write. Happily there are people involved in the human side of space exploration who see value in unconventional coverage(or are just plain too nice to say no). For their candor and wit - and the generosity with which they shared their time and know-how - super-galactic thanks.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Mir astronaut Jerry Linenger writes in his memoir that he was surprised to find a bottle of cognac in one arm of his spacesuit and a bottle of whiskey in the other. (Linenger was the Frank Burns of space exploration:”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Twenty-five percent of the nurses in one study, writes Larson, had dry, damaged skin. Ironically, the nurses may be exacerbating the very thing that hand-washing seeks to prevent: the spread of infectious bacteria. Larson says healthy skin sheds 10 million particles a day, and 10 percent of those harbor bacteria. Dry, damaged skin flakes off more readily than healthy, lubricated skin and thus disperses more bacteria. Damaged skin also harbors more pathogens than healthy skin. As”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Hot Bods and Tail Pipe #14, The Adventures of Pee Man) suggests that Silvia Saint, at age thirty-three, had earned a rest.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“We’re kinda the wingnuts.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Astronaut’s Cookbook,”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“closing systems and “reduced chassis and elastic ears.” NASA’s adult diapers are COTS—a “commercial off the shelf” product. The current one is a product called Absorbencies. It is hard to imagine a worse name for a diaper, except possibly NASA’s previous commercial off-the-shelf adult diaper, Rejoice.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Baumgartner jump off the outstretched right arm of the enormous Christ statue in Rio de Janeiro or, more prosaically, the roof of the Warsaw Marriott. For most of his jumps he wears a skydiver’s jumpsuit. In the Marriott video, he’s dressed in business casual. He’s done this to pass through the lobby without arousing suspicion, but the impression it gives, as you watch him walk to the edge of the roof”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“This is no doubt the reason that even Steven “the Hunter” Hunt, the man whose pictures and video feed comprise underwatersex.net, chose to opt out of neutral buoyancy and “drop down about 30 feet to a sand bar” for his “Nude Scuba” encounter with an unnamed “bored, lonely housewife.” Says Steve: “Can you imagine all the positions you can do while weightless?” You’ll have to,”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“NASA buys it by the ton, but you can buy it by the kilogram ($28). Go to the eNasco educational products Web site, but not if you’re squeamish. “Save on Lab Time!” says the promo copy for skinned cats. The eNasco dissection specimen section offers ten different skinned cat products, proving that there is, in fact, more than one way.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Gravity Research Foundation, founded by multimillionaire businessman and fire alarm magnate Roger Babson. After gravity pulled Babson’s sister toward the bottom of a river and she drowned, he became history’s most voluble antigravity activist, publishing screeds like Gravity:”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Only in space do you understand what incredible happiness it is just to walk. To walk on Earth" -Aleksandr Laveykin”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“The astronaut was the three-year-old chimpanzee called Ham. (Dittmer was Ham’s trainer.) Ham was more than just the first space capsule landing mishap, of course. He was the first American to ride a capsule into space and come back down alive. As such, he put a bit of a tarnish on the Mercury astronauts’ considerable shine. Ham’s much-publicized flight made it clear to all: The astronaut doesn’t fly the capsule; the capsule flies the astronaut. Along with fellow astrochimp Enos, who orbited Earth three months before John Glenn, Ham was the embodiment of a debate that persists to this day: Are astronauts necessary?”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Dead people make NASA uncomfortable. They don’t use the word cadaver in their documents and publications, preferring the new euphemism postmortem human subject (or, yet more cagily, PMHS).”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“Zero gravity is part of the reason NASA price tags seem so extravagant. For every new piece of equipment that goes up on a mission—every pump, fan, throttle, widget—a prototype must be flown on the C-9 to be sure it works in weightlessness.”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“(When I get back to my room to review my notes, I find that I’ve written nothing of substance. I wasn’t so much taking notes as testing my Fisher Space Pen. My notes say: “WOO” and “yippee.”)”
― Mary Roach, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void