f7d9395c_atings_and_reviews___Gwern_net__Review
[Title] Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void [Author] Mary Roach [Rating] ★★★★ [Year] 2010 [Read] 2013/06/29 [Review] 
Hilarious, eye for details, incessant curiosity, good at tracking down bogus stories and rumors. Roach comes up with all the best quotes and stories, seems to have talked to everyone and done everything. And her running commentary is also hilarious - she’s almost as funny as she thinks she is. I laughed many times reading the book. This is definitely more “mind candy” than educational as it jumps from food to sex to hygiene to acceleration issues to psychology without any overview or unifying ideas or concepts, although I did learn a fair bit anyway from the scattershot approach. (One chapter was a revelation for me in explaining why early science fiction often postulated space driving people insane). If there is any big picture to Packing for Mars, it’s that outer space is really hard for humans to survive in and everyone & everything has to be studied in microscopic detail for anyone to go there and come back alive. Reading all the checks and modifications and details, one is boggled that we made it to the Moon, much less we be musing a Mars mission. (It makes for a pretty compelling argument that humans just don’t belong in space and that if we put half as much effort/time/money into automated exploration, we would know far more about the universe than we do - apparently, the ISS has cost us $150 billion‽ Roach is aware that this is the impression she gives in her conclusion where she criticizes ‘simulations’, but honestly, I didn’t find it a very compelling defense of the enormous difficulties & costs of shooting up some monkeys to walk around Mars compared to just sending probes.) I compiled some excerpts from most of the chapters: - chapters 1-2 - 3 - 4-5 - 6-7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14-15 - endnotes
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