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Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars is an essay collection, inspired by the author's four-month stay inside a simulated Martian habitat. 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 Hawaii. For four months she lived, worked, and slept in an isolated geodesic dome, conducting a sleep study on her crewmates 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.
List of contents
CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION
II. ASTRO-GASTRONOMY
III. ON BOREDOM
IV. THE STANDARD ASTRONAUT
V. GUINEA-PIGGING
VI. ON VESSELS
VII. ON ISOLATION
VIII. ON CORRESPONDENCE
IX. DREAMS OF MARS, DREAMS OF EARTH
X. DEEP TIME, DEEP SPACE
XI. HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS
XII. EXITS AND AIR LOCKS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
About the author
Kathy Arlene Greene was born on April 16, 1950 in Monmouth County to an old New Jersey family. She attended Ocean Township schools, Monmouth College and American Academy. Married in 1973 to Attorney and Minister Ralph Fucetola JD, the couple has one child, Drew Adriel Greene Fucetola.
Kathy was descended from George Washington's stepson, from the Lees of Virginia (including Robert E. Lee's sister) and the Greene's of Rhode Island and Monmouth County, NJ.
Her Greene ancestors were dissenters from first coming to America in the 1640s. One relative was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for "ogling women at Sunday Service" and another was among the defendants in the 1647 trial of Anabaptist followers of Ann Hutchinson in Rhode Island, America's first political trial. Later the family provided several Revolutionary War commanders including Gen. Nathanial Greene.
She and her husband co-founded the New Age Non-Denominational LifeSpirit Congregational Church in 1974 - www.LifeSpirit.org. Rev. Greene was the Chair of the Church from its founding until her sudden passing on April 14, 2021.
Kathy wrote under the name Kate Greene.
