Packing For Mars is a book revolving around the core questions of how to care for astronauts in the void, based on the idea that they are going to Mars - a two year mission. A fairly comprehensive list of important considerations has been covered, including the psychological impact of living in a box for two years, the effects of zero gee on bone mass and muscle formation, the dangers of cosmic radiation with regards to possible or accidental pregnancy, the issue of how to pack, store, and eat enough waferised food to last two years, and the less savoury but almost more important question of what to do with human waste at the end of it all.
I was pretty impressed with how thorough this book was. It covered questions I didn't even know I had in a tasteful manner without compromising on the details. There's an amazing amount of research into it all, and the author's written as much as she can from her own perspective, even going up in a research plane flying parabolic arcs that allow zero gravity for half a minute at a time. The writing's also humorous and helps point out that yeah - space is difficult to manage, and hard to work in, and expensive to deal with, and deadly if you get it wrong...but it's still AWESOME.
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