Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary RoachMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mary Roach's book here seems to combine the charms and idiosyncrasies of all here titles I have read: a zealous if fruitless search for sex in space (Bonk), what death from depressurization would really be like (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers) and a lengthy examination of icky food and resultant egesta (poo and pee) in the rockets (Gulp). I had been kinda over book-length discourses on space discoveries that haven't happened (The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence, Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) and put off reading this, since NASA has not even scheduled a date to send men to mars. However, there is much more to this book, and the Mars angle is really a footnote. This is more about the history of technological development, mainly by the U.S. and Russia, to put humans in space, allow them to work there, and bring them back.
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