Pun Salad

Mary Roach is a journalist who takes her own (as near as I can tell) unique angle on science and technical subjects: concentrating on the gross, disgusting, horrible, edgy, pretty close to dirty, details.

Reader, if you're sensitive to such things, she's also put out Packing for Mars for Kids. Amazon says it's OK for ages 8-12. And also much shorter, 144 pages.

Mary—and I call her Mary, because if she's gonna talk dirty to me, I'm gonna use her first name—doesn't really do a lot of Mars-specific stuff here, despite the title. She interviews a handful of actual astronauts, but she's also interested in the army of mostly-unsung scientists, engineers, and medical personnel involved in getting the astronauts up, keeping them alive in a strange, often hostile, environment, and bringing them back safely. There's a lot of history, going back to the V-2 flights. (Didja know: "In May 1947, a V-2 launched from White Sands Proving Ground headed south instead of north, missing downtown Juarez, Mexico, by 3 miles.")

Weightlessness has always been an issue, with a lot of uncertainty about its short-term and long-term effects, and continuing health issues. (Not to mention vomiting.) Mary gets to take a ride on the "Vomit Comet", and reports on the pluses and minuses.

What are the psychological issues about being cooped up in a relatively small space with your co-workers? Experiments in this area are not without amusement, although usually not to the experimental subjects.

There's a lot of information about space pooping and peeing, and what happens when such things, um, get out of control. Urine collection involves a condom-like, um, attachment. But: "No one is excluded from the astronaut corps based on penis size." (Did that factoid get included in the "for kids" edition?)

And, at the (literal) other end, space nutrition. And booze? Beer is a no-no, or anything with bubbles for that matter; bubbles don't work well in zero-g. They tried cream sherry, and the reviews were poor.

And there's a chapter about sex in space. With a diverting aside about how dolphins, um, do it in their buoyant environment. And I learned something about guy dolphins that involves the word "prehensile".

Mary keeps things light, with only one exception. In her research about how astronauts might "bail out" of a damaged spacecraft, naturally the Columbia disaster is discussed. And as Mary interviews one of the researchers involved, she realizes he's the widower of one of those astronauts. That's a very somber note.

I've read a number of space books over the past few years, and this is a very valuable entry, simply due to Mary's down-to-earth honesty and relentless curiousity.