Customer Reviews

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

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It seems like a previous life: the mid-1980s and NASA's program to send the first American "civilian" into space. I was interested, then sidelined when applications were restricted to teachers, then stunned by Challenger's launch disaster. But now I'm delighted to get a sort of ride-along with the clever and uber-curious Mary Roach in PACKING FOR MARS.

She begins: "To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with." And then she dives in to explore that human machinery in space and how everything -- procedures, equipment and supplies -- is designed to best serve it.

Through examples from animal simulations and crash-test cadavers, the race-for-space/ shuttle/ space-station projects, and planning Mars-length missions, she examines astronaut selection; the effects of isolation, inactivity and cramped spaces; the spectrum from weightlessness to multiple g-forces; eating, eliminating, and hygiene; and ... well, enough with the listmaking; it hints at dull and anyone who's read Roach knows she doesn't do dull. Instead, she mines excellent and surprising facts about physics and biology -- and what most captures me is her practicality, for example this from a passage about religious observations aboard the international space station: "Zero gravity and a ninety-minute orbital day created so many questions for Muslim astronauts that a [guideline] was drafted. Rather than require [them] to pray five times during each ninety-minute orbit of Earth, they were allowed to go by the twenty-four-hour cycle of the launch location." How to stay oriented toward Mecca at such speed and prostrate oneself in weightlessness are also addressed.

I loved Roach's Stiff, but Spook -- not as much, so skipped Bonk (until now, maybe). She's a front-and-center kind of narrator, a participant even, and Spook seemed too much about her. Here, she's back in terrific Stiff form -- (wo)manning the audio and video for us like a TV news crew, giving just an occasional glimpse of her metaphoric microphone to remind us she's there. Though she isn't a slave to structure and linearity, there's a satisfying organization of her material into chapters here. And all of her interesting-but-off-topic segues? -- they're here too, in a hundred witty footnotes. She also references dozens of space-travel articles, histories, biographies and memoirs and lists them in a bibliography. Highly recommended.

As I suspected, Mary Roach's new book is rocketing (pun intended) up the best-seller list. She has once again focused her splendid sense of humor on the weird aspects of science to reveal the most human dimensions of preparing for space exploration.

I had always been frustrated with NASA's stopping at the moon. "Let's go on to Mars," I would say. "What are you waiting for?"
Mary Roach points out that human biology, sociology, and psychology are the weak links in the chain. The engineering is in place. People are the problem. And these problems are the ones no one much talks about in polite company. What do you do with all the pee? How do you keep from hating the guy or gal next to you when they reek of B.O.? How do you remain sane for nearly two years cramped into a space the size of a small SUV, with all sun and no stars to keep you company?

Mary Roach tells us that there are people uniquely, biologically qualified for such a journey. Evidently the ideal astronaut could well be an African-American who is deaf. This would help with loss of bone density and with not tossing your cookies in space.
These are some of the strange quirks of nature she turns up, which has become her trademark. She asks the questions that few have the audacity to ask, and she asks them of people who generally would not talk, on the record, about such things. I have a feeling that the book might be beautifully accompanied by videos of the astonished faces of her interviewees, trying to cope with questions they have never had to field before.

This is a delightful read. Mary Roach will entertain you and keep you laughing out loud and she maintains your sense of wonder about space. In the end, you will want us to go to Mars more than ever because it represents a conquering of our biological limits even as we conquer our little corner of the cosmos.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach is a must read for any of us that are curious about space exploration and what it would be like to live in the "void". This is my first Mary Roach book and I can already tell that I'm going to have to take a long look at her backlist, especially Stiff.

I know that most space exploration advocates have been completely frustrated by our lack of progress in colonizing space after the Apollo moon missions, especially the hold up on the trip to Mars. The issue isn't technology, as Roach points out, but the frailty of the human animal. Packing for Mars is a wake up call and a realistic look at what it would take to make that trip: food, social issues, psychological issues, and just the basic "how do you handle the lack of.....?." What does happen to a human who is deprived of familiar earth environments for a long period of time? What do you do with human waste on long trips? Do we really have to drink pee (recycled of course)? What's the impact of not being able to stand or run for more than a year? What is "fecal popcorning"? And on and on.

Packing for Mars isn't a comedy, but there are moments of absolute humor in this read.

Well researched, well written, and terribly interesting Packing for Mars is a terrific read, especially for us space program fanatics and amateur astronomers.

I highly recommend.

First, audio books are okay, as they're mobile and offer something interesting to listen to in wretched DC traffic. But there's no paper, binding, printed words. I can't highlight, or go back and re-read passages, which makes a thorough review more difficult.

A note on this audio version: The "performer" is Sandra Burr (the Bonk reader), and she does just fine. Her voice is akin to Fresh Air's Terry Gross, mature, smooth, somewhat familiar.

This book is another thoroughly enjoyable Mary Roach work, with the same diligent research, humor, inquisitiveness and hot pursuit of answers to the very common yet too-often-unasked questions that I loved in Bonk. Her humor is not snide or cutting, is sometimes a bit, ah, earthy, but is simple, straightforward, and derives often from the irony of what she is seeing, being told, or the curious and fascinating juxtapositions of facts and observations in what for her is a new world; she's not above a good doody joke.

This book really isn't about upcoming Mars missions and preparations to undertake them. There's some of that, but this is more about the less-publicized but arguably much more important aspects of space travel, the enduring challenges from the first days of space chimps and dogs. The biggest problem with space is accommodating humans. That means food, water, air, and finding ways to handle what results. It means finding ways for humans to adjust to/deal with each other for days on end when crammed into the equivalent of the front seat of a Yugo. This book is about the universe of problems in putting humans into the most anti-human environment, and then handling all of the little yet absolutely critical details: breathing, eating, excreting, staying clean, fighting boredom, preventng psychosis.

Roach has an unabashed curiosity for the more, ah, fundamental aspects of things. She's not interested in the ready-made PR line that we're all fed. Above all, Roach is a good sport, up for travel to NASA sites, the Arctic or Russia, up for trying experiments and situations herself, a willing and normal buddy who reports fully on what she's experiencing. I'd love to sit next to her on a very long plane flight.

So, you wanna be an astronaut? You'd better be ready to put up with a lot. The space agencies are watching, listening, and evaluating. Never mind their intentional little mind-games, with sneaky, roundabout evaluations, tests-within-tests, calls at 0-dark-thirty, lying about lost tests results, trying to stress you. If you don't do well with repetition and petty annoyances, then a major mission malfunction at 7 bazillion miles from Earth is really going to set you off; so goes the candidate-selection logic.

There is not a great deal of deep scientific discussion or technical language; thankfully this book does not read like Scientific American. But, Roach does provide the necessary scientific and technical background and context to set up her explorations, and thankfully she does not dumb it down, using spot-on technical and scientific terms as needed, but never in excess (and often for humor).

You get a myriad of thoroughly fascinating explorations of all things space-y, and Roach's frequent and highly entertaining footnotes, on such delightful subjects as: the importance of vaginal contraction for lifelong health; urine collection in zero-g; cadaver use in impact studies; space farts, and whether a good one might actually propel you in zero-g; how to treat with respect and dignity the various remains of a trailblazing, national-hero space chimp; the coefficient of flatus; mess hall pork and sub-optimal animal research outcomes; space-chimp Enis the Penis, and the quest to find out if he was a stinker or a wanker; fecal papier-māché'; getting your whosis all lined up--on camera--on the space toilet simulator; food tubes/cubes/bricks/bars/blocks/rods; the unpleasant choice of slow suffocation in a space suit or a cyanide capsule if you can't get back through the hatch; helmet vomitus; why gravity is your urethra's friend; human skin oil secretion and its role in underwear decomposition; egesta; bear hibernation bloodborne calcium regeneration; the "bursting" of a body in the vacuum of space; human body reactions to and actions in zero-G, and in lots of Gs; a BAMF; the corned beef sandwich incident; an exploration of the suffix "-naut," and lots more.

And yes, Ms. Roach drinks her own urine, and pronounces it a nicely sweet and restorative lunchtime beverage.

And never forget this sage advice: "...anal leakage is not your pal."

Chapter 12 probes sex in space and/or zero gravity, and determining whether this actually has taken place yet. The Mary Roach who got it so right in Bonk is all over this investigation, asking prickly questions of aerospace professionals who either have been sworn to secrecy or are just being prudent. Roach tracks the issue relentlessly, even chasing down a retired Czech porn actress to discuss her reported earth-shattering contribution to aerospace exploration. Roach chases this expertly, and in the end offers a few clear answers, but no definitive answer to the central question.

The language is salty at times, with a couple f-bombs (nevertheless thoroughly in keeping with context). There is some quoted profanity, and a bit provided by Roach herself, a nice accessible, earthy touch. This being said, it's really pretty tame. Age-wise, this is acceptable reading for a well-read, mature 13-year-old, although some of Roach's jokes will go right over said reader's young head.

Bottom line: the unbridled curiosity, intellectual rigor, conscientious research and entertaining humor that made Spook, Stiff and Bonk such successes is fully present here. Roach has crafted a wonderful, highly entertaining and informative book that blows out of the water, uh, explosively decompresses almost every science fiction film ever made, and sucks almost all of the glamour and some of the glory out of space exploration faster than a defective airlock. Until they perfect warp drives and localized gravity generators, I'll stay down here, where I'm in control.

Combine equal parts of Sylvia Branzei's 'Grossology' and the Bathroom Readers' Institute's 'Uncle John's Bathroom Reader' series, make mention of something coming out of (or going into) the anus in nearly every chapter, add a thin pretext of future Mars expeditions, then glaze it over with stories of Astro-chimp masturbation and prehensile dolphin penises - Voila! - You now have an idea of what to expect from Mary Roach's 'Packing for Mars.' (Be sure to wash it all down with a nice chilled glass of charcoal filtered urine - Ms. Roach describes this beverage as "sweet...restorative and surprisingly drinkable" - Yum).

Okay...perhaps the aforementioned description of 'Packing for Mars' is hyperbolic and a little bit unfair. To her credit, Ms. Roach seems to have put forth painstaking efforts in her research (she also includes long, ancillary foot notes on almost every page of her book). Moreover, through her emails and interviews with cosmonauts, astronauts, NASA personnel, etc., she manages to coax some rather candid information about seldom discussed issues/problems associated with space travel (e.g., personal hygiene, lavatory practices, sexual activity, etc.) Parts of this book were truly insightful, and from that perspective, I say "kudos" to Ms. Roach for her efforts.

That being said, I have to honestly admit that I was relieved to finally finish the book.

In essence, 'Packing for Mars' is 16 vignette-style chapters that are, at best, tenuously linked in any cohesive fashion. I would argue that, with the exception of maybe the last portions of the book, you could jumble these chapters into any order that you pleased and it wouldn't detract from a general understanding of the material.
At times, it seems that the book's context of outer-space missions serves as mere window dressing for Ms. Roach's unabashed desire to write graphically about "taboo" bodily functions. She seems to have a particular fetish with all things associated with the anus. Without exaggeration, nearly every chapter has as least one reference to something associated with this part of the body (e.g., defecation, flatulence, stool sample storage, rectal catheters, etc.) She even briefly mentions viewing her own anus on a closed-circuit camera while testing out the Johnson Space Center positional trainer (a.k.a., the "potty cam"). However, by putting this information into the context of "space exploration," her writing is magically glossed over as being a brazen and "drolly funny" scientific endeavor rather than a crass and lowbrow collection of essays. I don't deny that some of it is interesting. However, I have a hard time believing that conservative-leaning radio talk shows such as the Twin Cities' "Garage Logic" would have been allowed to hawk this book had the scatological issues not been subsumed (albeit, at times, very minimally) into the more noble issue of space exploration. (The good ol' boys at "Garage Logic" had a great time guffawing about the part of the book mentioning astronaut turds breaking fee of their confines and floating around the work areas during space missions).
In addition, for a book with the word "Mars" in the title, there really isn't much discussion about Mars at all; only toward the end of the book does Ms. Roach begins to scratch the surface about past, present, and future Mars exploration. In the end, when she's finally asking her apex question - Is it worth it to go to Mars (at a cost of $500 billion)? - she falls flat by saying "Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? [M]oney saved by government redlining ... is always squandered. Let's squander some on Mars." She may have a point regarding government mismanagement of American tax dollars. However, I could hardly endorse the allocation of such an exorbitant amount of money based on the philosophy put forth here.
The final (and perhaps the most detracting) flaw with 'Packing for Mars' is Ms. Roach's insistence on forcing her idea of comedic one-liners into her work. Rather than "cackling like an insane person" (as A.J. Jacobs claims to have done in his praise for the book), I found myself continually rolling my eyes and audibly groaning at her cornball sense of humor. Here's a prime example taken verbatim from the book (p. 290) - ""Stool samples were...homogenized, freeze-dried, and analyzed in duplicate," wrote First Lieutenant Keith Smith in an evaluation of an aerospace diet that included beef stew and chocolate pudding. YOU HAD TO HOPE THAT LIEUTENANT SMITH KEPT HIS CONTAINERS STRAIGHT." (Emphasis added). These "cutesy" types of quips are found throughout the entire book, and eventually they become annoying. After awhile I started to imagine a 1950's sit-com laugh track being played whenever I came across one of these banal attempts at humor. It just felt too forced.

Fortunately, I picked this book up at my local library rather than buying it. Despite the aforementioned flaws, there truly are some great pieces of trivial information in this book; for that reason alone, if I ever see a copy of it at a thrift store or on a bargain bookshelf, I'll snatch it up. However, I can not recommend paying retail price for it.

The ability to land a spacecraft on Mars is old hat. As a matter of fact, the technology, although it was and remains prohibitively expensive, existed over thirty years ago. The real impediment, indeed, the only impediment to manned space travel to Mars is man himself.

In PACKING FOR MARS, an inexhaustibly curious, incorrigibly irreverent and perennially humorous Mary Roach explores the myriad issues and problems that the biological package known as "man" presents to space travel. It is no exaggeration to suggest that preparation for long term survival in low gravity and extended confinement in extremely close quarters touches on virtually every aspect of man's life - biology, culture, morality, sexuality, psychology, politics, leisure, health, hygiene and even religious practice.

Although the scientific content of PACKING FOR MARS is 100% real and informative, Mary Roach's approach to the topic is light-hearted and, from cover to cover, tongue in cheek and 100% hilarious and utterly entertaining. With the practical problems of zero-gravity defecation and the logistical problem of what to do with the results of any successful elimination being very near the top of the list of engineering conundrums, it's probably not a big surprise to let a potential reader know that scatological humour runs rampant throughout the book. Tears of laughter positively streamed from my eyes as I learned, for example, that the gas volume and the speed of expulsion of even the most flatulent person conceivable would not be sufficient to propel him or her across the room in a zero-gravity situation (Note to self - watch for a potential future MYTHBUSTERS episode!)

PACKING FOR MARS ends with the acknowledgement that pure research on Mars is probably best conducted by robots, computers and pure hardware technology without benefit of man's presence. But, she also pleads the case that, since governments are so prone to fritter away vast sums of money on unproductive and entirely wasteful projects anyway, perhaps it may actually be prudent to plan some frivolous spending on a manned Mars landing. After all, you never know what may come of it!

PACKING FOR MARS is highly recommended with the comment that, aside from being thoroughly entertaining and wonderfully educational, it undoubtedly makes my Top 10 list of the funniest books I've ever read. How can you go wrong with a combination like that?

Paul Weiss

In many ways I really like Mary Roach's Packing for Mars. It's an extraordinarily inventive approach at space travel and our space program. When the book is good, it's really good. The book is at its best when it looks at how the absolute mundane parts of being alive translate when taken into a zero gravity environment. But the book sometimes veers off course (especially in many of the footnotes) and at times becomes a little to cleaver for its own good.

Packing for Mars is a perfect beach read - it's light, engaging and often funny, but it wasn't strong enough to make me want to run out and recommend it to friends. It's the kind of book that would be ideal to pick up when it comes out in paperback to read on a long plane ride or on a beach trip.

Roach is a funny writer if a bit too cute at times, but the book suffers from a lack of cohesion. There are certainly some interesting aspects of space travel that you might not normally encounter in your average PBS special, but you might also be surprised at how quickly scatological humor can get old. As a fan of Malcolm Gladwell, I have come to appreciate nonfiction that is at its best when it has the hook of a truly interesting character, teasing the science out of what is ultimately a human story. Roach certainly does this as well, but she so often jumps from person to person that the impact is at times lost (ditto for an excessive use of footnotes). Even as I found the book intriguing, I think I would have preferred a more serious and comprehensive look into the future of manned spaceflight.

Mary Roach is, easily, one of the funniest writers in America. What makes this even more interesting is that, she isn't a comedienne or even a comic novelist; she's a SCIENCE writer. Both "Stiff" and "Bonk" were hilarious... AND informative, but she has outdone herself with "Packing for Mars". Having said all that, the question becomes: Is the audio version (read, not by Roach, but by Sandra Burr) able to bring out all the humour AND THE SCIENCE of the written text? Yes... in spades! Indeed, this leads to a dilemma. One of the best places to listen to audio books is, of course, in your car, only... How safe are you when you're laughing hysterically at the functioning of a Space Toilet? If you think Texting while driving is dangerous, let me tell you, picturing an astronaut with a vomit filled space helmet can be lethal at 60 mph! But, if you can handle it, this is one enjoyable experience... oh, and you'll learn something, too!

Packing For Mars is the first book by Mary Roach that I've read, but it won't be the last. I judged it by the cover and I'm glad I did. It's rare to find a book that's interesting and educational, and at the same time really funny. This book is that and more.

The truth is usually stranger than fiction, and the story of our reach for the stars is no exception. Humans are not designed to live and work in outer space and the challenges that this presents are numerous. Packing For Mars goes behind the scenes of space exploration to meet the people who make it possible.

You can tell Mrs. Roach did her homework. She talks with everyone from the astronauts to the guy who designs the space toilets. She goes to the training facilities and test labs to see what types of crazy and amazing things people are doing for science. She also uncovers lots of the little noted but fascinating details.

It's a great story but what makes Packing For Mars even better is that it's so funny. Mrs. Roach has a terrific sense of humor and this book will make you laugh, out loud, many times.