In the book “Packing for Mars” by Mary Roach, scientists conducted an experiment where people were places in isolation chambers for 500 days to mimic a round trip and four month stay on Mars. Throughout the 500 days, the subjects of the experiment had problems and challenges that had to endure. The purpose of the experiment was for scientist to further understand the effects of being in a small space with people you do not know, which is what most astronauts have to deal with.

The people who volunteered to participate in the experiment are of different genders and backgrounds. Since they aren’t from the same countries they struggles trying to communicate with each other and clashed because of cultural differences. Also the longer they stayed together the more they got annoyed with each other. For example, one of the female subjects was sitting on one of the male subjects and kissed him on the cheek, as a result on New Years he French kissed her without her consent. She felt disrespected but the Russian male subject thought that she was flirting with him but she was just being friendly. I personally thought that she crossed the professional line with the physical contact of kissing him but we are of different cultures so what might seem as flirting could be signs of just being friendly to her.

The author did a great job on keeping the audience amused and hooked. This reading was very interesting and very detailed. The detailed made me feel as if I was actually in the story. Also she did an amazing job on making the article simple enough for people who don’t really know much about space to understand what’s going on. The only thing I think the author has to work on is explaining the definition of some terms used in the reading. For example, the author did not explain what maladaptive symptomology or popkas means