Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth by Kate Greene

Kate Greene was one of six people who spent four months living in a geodesic dome in Mauna Loa, Hawaii, simulating a Martian environment. The 'almost' astronauts were human guinea pigs in the Hi-SEAS project focused on the domestic challenges of privacy, food, and shared resources in space.

This book is the result of Greene's struggle to find a way to talk about those months and how they changed her.

Greene travels across a broad range of philosophical questions that arose from her experience, discussing food, finding a balance between solitude and sociability, boredom, and isolation, applying her insights to daily life.

I appreciated her thoughts on the privatization of space technology and the lack of oversight in the data collection and use of social media by tech companies, influencing users without their knowledge or consent.

The Space Race arose from a quest for military and political dominance. Greene asks, is it possible for space exploration to transcend "nationalist pride, capitalist power, and ordinary ego?"

"I've come up with more questions than answers," Greene writes.

Entertaining and informing.

I received a free egalley from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars: Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth
by Kate Greene
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date July 14, 2020
ISBN:9781250159472
hardcover $27.99 (USD)

from the publisher

When it comes to Mars, the focus is often on how to get there: the rockets, the engines, the fuel. But upon arrival, what will it actually be like?

In 2013, Kate Greene moved to Mars. That is, along with five fellow crew members, she embarked on NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawai'i. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates and gaining incredible insight into human behavior in tight quarters, as well as the nature of boredom, dreams, and isolation that arise amidst the promise of scientific progress and glory.

In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Greene draws on her experience to contemplate humanity’s broader impulse to explore. The result is a twined story of space and life, of the standard, able-bodied astronaut and Greene’s brother’s disability, of the lag time of interplanetary correspondences and the challenges of a long-distance marriage, of freeze-dried egg powder and fresh pineapple, of departure and return.

By asking what kind of wisdom humanity might take to Mars and elsewhere in the Universe, Greene has written a remarkable, wide-ranging examination of our time in space right now, as a pre-Mars species, poised on the edge, readying for launch.