Mary Roach has made a career writing books that answer questions most people would never think to ask. Having already given readers more than they ever wanted to know about the science of cadavers (“Stiff”), souls (“Spook”) and sex (“Bonk”), she turns her inquisitive mind to the cosmos.
“Packing for Mars” is a book even the most casual space geek will enjoy. From the race to the moon in the ’60s to the current goal of a manned mission to Mars by 2030, the book features chapters exploring everything from vomiting in zero gravity (“Throwing Up and Down”) to sex in space (“The Three-Dolphin Club”). It’s written in a very casual style, with Roach inserting herself into the story whenever her curiosity demands it. She takes a ride aboard NASA’s tricked-out C-9 to experience weightlessness and drinks her own filtered urine — all in the name of research.
Review: Mary Roach’s ‘Packing for Mars’ demystifies space science with laughter The Canadian Press
Elon Musk: ‘I’m planning to retire to Mars’ The Observer
The SpaceX founder is convinced that humanity’s survival rests on its ability to move to the red planet. He tells Paul Harris how his company is making the leap to the stars an affordable dream. The fresh-faced 39-year-old man, in a dark T-shirt and jeans, is talking about travelling to Mars. Not now, but when he’s older and ready to swap life on Earth for one on the red planet. “It would be a good place to retire,” he says in all seriousness. Normally, this would be the time to make one’s excuses and leave the company of a lunatic. Or to smile politely and humour a space nerd’s unlikely fantasies. But this man needs to be taken seriously for one compelling reason: he already has his own spaceship. This is Elon Musk, a brilliant entrepreneur who made a fortune from the internet and has invested vast amounts of it in building his own private space rocket company, SpaceX. Indeed, far from being crazy, Musk is the real-life inspiration for the movie character Tony Stark, the playboy scientist hero of the Iron Man franchise.
Food for Mars: A Daunting Challenge Discovery
Most people find the palatability of in-flight entrees an oxymoron. But even frequent fliers seldom encounter more than a few such meals per week. Astronauts, in contrast, may have to survive months in orbit dining on a really limited menu of processed foods and reconstituted beverages served from oh-so-glamorous plastic pouches. Luckily, even the International Space Station can restock its pantry several times a year because these foods are relatively perishable. Which explains the problem NASA faces in planning for really long missions — like a trip to Mars.
Astronaut foods may appear indestructible, but many crew favorites don’t retain their nutrition or palatability for even a year, notes Michele Perchonok.
Planning a trip to Mars Stuff
The temperature’s literally freezing, the air is poisonous and you’ll die if you go outside without your space suit.
Why would you put your hand up to be on the first space shuttle to Mars?
Space tourism may not be a reality yet, but in preparation for the day that it is, Guy Murphy has written a book about living on the red planet, titled Mars: A Survival Guide.
Murphy wouldn’t say no to a seat on the shuttle but he accepts moving to a Martian neighbourhood would have its downsides.
However those problems would pale in relation to what else the planet has to offer.
14 students from Bellevue accepted into the Washington Aerospace Scholars Program Bellevue Reporter
Fourteen students from Bellevue will participate in one of the four summer residency sessions this summer at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Washington Aerospace Scholars (WAS) is a competitive educational program for high school juniors from across Washington State. The 14 are among the 160 students who qualified for the summer program from 247 students who applied in November. To qualify for the residency program, the students spent six months studying a NASA-designed, distance-learning curriculum via the Internet.
During the residency experience, they will collaborate with the other student participants on the design of a human mission to Mars. WAS scholars are guided by professional engineers, scientists, university students and certified educators as they plan these missions.
Admin Aims For Mars By Mid-2030s National Journal
The U.S. will aim to begin manned missions beyond the moon by 2025, with a planned round-trip to Mars the following decade, the WH announced Monday.
“Our sights [are] set ultimately on Mars and beyond,” said Jim Kohlenberger, chief of staff at the WH Office of Science and Technology Policy.
What’s more, Pres. Obama’s new space policy lays out plans to extend the the life of the International Space Station for another decade and beyond, rather than sticking with plans to scrap the orbiting outpost in 5 years.
Drug mitigates toxic effects of radiation in mice UNC Lineberger Cancer Center
While radiation has therapeutic uses, too much radiation is damaging to cells. The most important acute side effect of radiation poisoning is damage to the bone marrow. The bone marrow produces all the normal blood cells, and therefore a high dose of radiation can lead to low blood counts of red cells, platelets and white blood cells. Humans that receive a lethal dose of radiation as in the setting of an accidental exposure die of bone marrow failure. While there are a few drugs that will decrease toxicity when given before exposure to radiation (“radioprotectants”); currently, no effective therapy exists to mitigate bone marrow toxicity of radiation when given after radiation exposure (“radiomitigants”). The identification of successful human radiomitigants is a top research priority of the US Department of Homeland Security and National Institutes of Health. Some of these drugs may lead to addiction in humans, who ought to visit addiction treatment in Los Angeles
Fact Sheet: The National Space Policy The White House
Today, President Obama announced the administration’s new National Space Policy. The National Space Policy expresses the President’s direction for the Nation’s space activities. The policy articulates the President’s commitment to reinvigorating U.S. leadership in space for the purposes of maintaining space as a stable and productive environment for the peaceful use of all nations. The United States will advance a bold new approach to space exploration. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will engage in a program of human and robotic exploration of the solar system, develop new and transformative technologies for more affordable human exploration beyond the Earth, seek partnerships with the private sector to enable commercial spaceflight capabilities for the transport of crew and cargo to and from the International Space Station, and begin human missions to new destinations by 2025.
Buzz Aldrin Is Not All That Impressed With Walking on the Moon Vanity Fair
Even in the company of other astronauts, Buzz Aldrin is still the hippest guy in the room. At the 2010 Astronaut Hall of Fame induction ceremony, which took place earlier this month at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Buzz was the Jack Nicholson to NASA’s Oscars. He exuded an effortless cool just by smiling at the crowd, and all eyes were on him even when he wasn’t meant to be the center of attention. The ceremony’s host, Jon Cryer (because when you think of astronauts, you think of the guy who played “Duckie“), perfectly summed up the feelings of pretty much everybody in the audience. “From the moment I arrived,” he said, “it has been all that I can do to keep from saying, ‘So Buzz, when you were like on the Moon and stuff, was it awesome’?”
For Mission to Mars, a New Road Map New York Times
“Game-changing” and “affordable” are perhaps the most repeated adjectives spoken by NASA officials in the last few months. The premise underlying President Obama’s proposed space policy is that development of new space technologies can speed space exploration at lower costs.
But skeptics in Congress counter that NASA has provided too few details to convince them that they should largely throw away the $10 billion that has been spent so far in NASA’s Constellation moon program and spend billions more on something new.
At a workshop last month in Galveston, members of NASA study teams looking at how to put in effect the Obama policy presented their current thinking to 450 attendees from industry and academia.
The NASA presenters, in describing how the space agency could make it to Mars on a limited budget, said their ideas represented “a point of departure” that would be revised with feedback.