How to Live in Space: Everything You Need to Know for the Not-So-Distant Future

Originally borrowed from library Kept reading it and finding new details Bought it to keep track of research notes Kudos to deliverer - Delivered despite a raging thunderstorm

Space is no longer the final frontier, it's where men and women are living now. In How to Live in Space, Colin Stuart, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, explains what is required to keep human beings alive in space. In around forty short chapters with accompanying photographs (many taken from space) the author explains how spiders spin webs in zero-G, how astronauts exercise in space, how they sleep, and how they keep their spacecraft clean. We learn how the physics of flame and smoke in in a weightless environment makes a fire in space so dangerous. My favorite photograph from the book is astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson looking pensively down at Earth through windows from the International Space Station. During the Cold War and so-called Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union there was no formal cooperation between the superpowers. But now Russians train and launch Western astronauts on Soyuz rockets from Baikonur. and the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne selects and trains European crew members for space missions. How to Live in Space tells the stories of early space pioneers, like Robert Goddard and Werner von Braun. There are several interesting articles on what it would take to reach Mars, what hazards have to be overcome, and what life on a terraformed Red Planet might be like. If you or someone you know is interested in any aspect of outer space, get Colin Stuart's How to Live in Space.

Stuart is an excellent guide for planning a space journey. I was a bit disappointed to find that this was written on a level for middle school children. It’s not nearly as in depth as I was expecting. That said, the information offered does match what I have read from other sources, such as Astronomy magazine. It’s an excellent resource for kids or for adults who are curious about the topic but haven’t read about it before. There are lots of pictures and sidebars, so much so that I believe they make up more of the book than the main entries themselves. But that’s JustMe.

I recommend this book highly except for one caveat: anyone interested enough in space to purchase this book likely knows all the things that are discussed inside. My husband recently became a little bit of a space nut, and whenever he has some spare time he listens to space podcasts, and watched rocket launches and YouTube videos discussing the science behind it all. It's certainly not a formal education, by any means, but through casual social media he's learned a decent amount of information with fairly little time investment. And because of that, nothing in this book was new to him- it was a nice way to have all the information together, and he enjoys flipping through the book, but it would have been a little better if the book included some "fresh" perspective on things that can't be found simply by doing a search on 'space' and taking a look at what comes up. I think this would make a thoughtful gift for someone interested in space, or a perfect read for someone who *just* began a bit of a space-addiction and hasn't checked out all the information available online.

I have a daughter who has been to Space Camp twice and LOVES all things space, and she keeps coming back to this book.