From the Land of TOO Much Information

When I told Adrian that I was reading a book about traveling to Mars, he said his friends had been talking about the book. It's called Packing for Mars. Anyway, Adrian said his friends don't like the idea of manned flights to Mars. Very understandable because some of them work on the Mars Rover project. They should read this book. People who are thinking about funding a manned mission to Mars should read this book.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great book. Full of information about the human body and how these bodies are affected by space. Full of history about manned (and monkied) space flights. If she didn't have such a wry viewpoint, this could have been very boring. As it was, it just left me wondering why we should pay to send anyone up in space. It was a surprise that she said at the end that we should fund this dream because we wouldn't spend the money we save on anything better. That could be true, we could buy a lot of bridges to nowhere. Or we could fund unmanned flights, learn more and tax the bodies of astronauts and taxpayers less.

Remember I said it was full of information about the human body as it relates to space? Think of a part of your body or a body function. Think of it in space. It's discussed here. Skin, fat, bones, brain, heart, urination, defecation, sex, saliva, everything. Everything. Everything.

This would probably be a better book to read than to listen to. As it was, this was a very good book.