Packing For Mars

How does Mary Roach do it?  Pack (pardon the pun!) so much interesting and entertaining information into Packing For Mars (#29), her book on the research and testing done in order to send humans into space.  As she points out, each stage of space exploration has presented its own set of challenges to be met and conquered.  What's the effect of gravity or weightlessness?  What will happen to the body's organs and circulation?  What if there's an accident?  What will they eat, and how do you deal with the waste products?  And how will the 500 day voyage to Mars change what we already have done for previous flights?

I'm not a science geek.  I don't usually sit around and read physics treatises for fun a la Liz Salander.  But I do have to admit that I have a Commander's Club Annual Pass for the Kennedy Space Center in my wallet.  I live where I can see the Shuttle launch.  I sit glued to NASA TV and watch while the astronauts are loaded in the Shuttle right through lift off.  Then it's out my patio door to watch it with my own eyes.  The houses in my neighborhood surround a large retention pond, and it's like watching gophers pop out of their holes to see all the neighbors come out to see the Shuttle.  My husband and I drove up to the Kennedy Space Center to watch the latest shuttle, Atlantis, drop like a rock out of the sky.  I've toured both Houston's Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center.  You get glimpses in both places of some of the testing done, and equipment used, but the exhibits usually focus on the technology, not the human/technology intersection.

Mary Roach answers many of the questions you may have always wondered about, but were afraid to ask.  She went right ahead and asked those questions, and fills in the missing voids (in some cases literally) based on her research, interviews and actual experiences where possible.  All in a way that made me frequently laugh out loud.  It seems instinctively to be an oxymoron: a humorous serious science book.  If only all knowledge could be transmitted so painlessly!  I'm on my way to reserve the two Mary Roach books that our library already owns.  Can't wait to read more by this author.