'Bonk' author Mary Roach explores the oogie aspects of space exploration in 'Packing for Mars'

'Bonk' author Mary Roach explores the oogie aspects of space exploration in 'Packing for Mars'

At a convention of space junkies in Santa Clara last weekend, Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart was giving an earnest PowerPoint lecture on the threat of asteroid impacts on Earth. As he spoke, swells of laughter seeped through the wall.

Oakland author Mary Roach was drawing howls in the next conference room, describing the perils of body odor, burping and other physical complications of close-quarters space flight. Then she mentioned Schweickart -- and his vomit.

"Throwing up and down in zero gravity," is how she put it. Schweickart was the first to admit getting sick in space, and he left the flight rotation to become a nauseous guinea pig for NASA researchers.

"He said, 'I have to wear the hat saying I got sick in space. All right, yes, I was first,'" she said.

That reverence for vanguard human feats, and irreverence in the variety of feats she explores, has garnered Roach acclaim as a popular science writer with a waggish fascination for the human body.

In her books, Roach has tackled the odd worlds of sex research ("Bonk"), cadaver research ("Stiff") and afterlife research ("Spook"). With her fourth book, "Packing for Mars," she has turned her probing curiosity and wit to man's quest to launch humans into space, and the massive physical, psychological and engineering challenges of a three-year Mars round-trip.

"I'm always writing about the human body in unusual circumstances," Roach said over a peanut-butter-and-jelly


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sandwich during a break at the conference. "To me, the human body is just a fascinating planet."

Roach, 51, started out working as a public relations scribe for the San Francisco Zoo before moving on to magazine stories and then books. A liberal-arts major at Wesleyan University who was "in it for the parties," she is quick to note that she has no formal science training.

"I really just pick it up as I go along by being the kind of irritating reporter who doesn't ask questions, but kind of says, 'Can you explain to me how the human nose works?' And asking for a two-hour lecture. These incredibly busy (scientists) ... they're too polite to hang up."

She is drawn to "surreal, quirky" science that rarely gets noticed. The nitty-gritty of astronauts and space researchers -- the trial-and-error mishaps that spur progress -- was a natural.

"I'm the kind of person, when I was young, I would look at a map, and the empty spaces intrigued me. I wanted to go to Antarctica, and then you get there and you realize why hardly anyone lives there," she said. "There's a pull toward the unexplored, empty reaches that is hard to explain."

Roach devotes a full chapter to space sickness. Another to zero-gravity toileting ("fecal popcorning" is a zero-gravity problem with troubling consequences, she writes). She explores research into human isolation, atrophy and bone loss, talking to subjects who are paid to lie in bed for months. She chronicles NASA's sometimes comical recipes for food that works in space.Roach is more than willing to throw her body into her work. She took a parabolic flight that generated 20-second intervals of zero gravity. She joined NASA researchers at anArctic station that resembled the Mars landscape and tried out a test toilet with a camera inside, designed to help astronauts achieve critical aim. It's the kind of swan-dive journalism Roach says she loves.

Then again, not always. For "Bonk," she convinced her husband, Ed Rachles, to engage in awkward sex inside an MRI tunnel, overseen by the research doctor. "I was really happy when it was over," she said. "It wasn't like sex at all. But I knew when I was doing it, this was going to be so fun to write."

Rachles, her husband of 11 years, wasn't so sanguine.

"I was thinking, anything for a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich," he joked.

Access grows a little easier with each book, she says, but doors still regularly slam shut. Convincing NASA to let her in on some of its more bizarre research proved a heavy chore. "Ninety percent of my time is badgering," she says. "I try to find out what's behind the 'No.' Usually, it's sort of fear of the unknown."

At the conference, Roach asked an audience who would volunteer for a Mars trip. A dozen hands rose. Then someone turned the question on her.

"Hell, no," she replied. Later, she explained.

"I'm grumpy. I dwell on the negative things. I'm kind of a pessimist, and I complain a lot. You don't want to go on an RV trip with me," she said. "I don't handle emergencies particularly well. I can barely change a light bulb. I would be the last person you'd ever pick for a long space mission."

Roach considers the "Mars" book a tribute to the ingenuity and doggedness of space scientists and astronauts. The focus on bodily functions, she notes, is not trivial. In past space flights, toileting challenges in confined spaces led NASA to exclude women.

"It's way more complicated than how do you go to the bathroom," she says. "I do get concerned a bit that for people who haven't read the book, the impression is it's trivial, 'tee-hee' stuff."

Even so, Roach isn't one to miss a fun turn. At the SETI conference, she carried with her a folded paper bag.

"I'm trying to get Rusty (Schweickart) to sign a barf bag."