Space Travel In Mary Roach's Packing For Mars

“The nobility of the human spirit grows harder for me to believe in. War, zealotry, greed, malls, narcissism. I see a backhanded nobility in excessive, impractical outlays of cash prompted by nothing loftier than a species joining hands and saying “I bet we can do this.” Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth. But would it? Since when has money saved by government redlining been spent on education and cancer research? It is always squandered. Let’s squander some on Mars. Let’s go out and play.” (Roach 318). The novel Packing for Mars was written to give insight to the reader of the challenges of space travel and how these challenges were dealt with. Mary Roach shares detailed factual information through transcripts and conversations

Astronauts often report that feeling weightless is the single most intense experience about space travel (Liapi and Ackermann 158). This is because you have always been exposed to the 9.81 m/s^2 of gravitational pull on Earth for your entire life. We take that for granted and do not even realize that we are always being pulled to Earth’s surface at that acceleration because we have always been exposed to it and know of nothing different. Humans have been exploring space for over fifty years, many successful contributions to human’s achievements in space have been completed in this time. This includes landing on the Moon, as well as creating the International Space Station (ISS) for humans from differing countries to come together to explore space together (Cain 336). The International Space Station is vastly superior compared to the rockets and space shuttles that launched nearly half a century ago thanks to new technological advancements since then. There are still toxic chemicals that the astronauts onboard of the International Space Station need to be precautious of such as ammonia, carbon monoxide, and aldehydes (Cain 336). Private space companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX are addressing these issues because he is progressing with technological advances that NASA never could (Petranek