Her writing career began while working part-time at the San Francisco Zoological Society, producing press releases on topics such as elephant wart surgery. She worked as a columnist and also worked in public relations for a brief time. After college, Roach moved to San Francisco, California and spent a few years working as a freelance copy editor. She received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Wesleyan University in 1981. To date, she has published five books: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003), Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2005) (published in some markets as Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (2008), Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (2010), and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (2013).

Mary Roach is an American author, specializing in popular science. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can’t walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations.Īs Mary Roach discovers, it’s possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

Packing for mars book