Part memoir, part essays, this book chronicles loosely the months the author spent in a simulated Mars environment recreated as best as possible in Hawai’i.

It’s not so much an exact chronological memoir, than a series of musings and thoughts about loneliness, learning to live in limited space with other people, relationships (inside and outside of the dome), personal reflections… which was both a good and a bad thing as far as I was concerned.

I absolutely loved the parts concerning the mission, its pitfalls and its successes, the people that worked on it. I also found fascinating some of the reflexions, especially when it came to the usual “Earthian” habits (checking social media, instant communication with our loved ones…) getting lost after weeks of isolation. For a real Mars mission would definitely leave its astronauts isolated in that regard as in many others.

I admit I was less interested, though, when reflexions went along other lines than the mission’s. It wasn’t uninteresting per se, but it wasn’t what I came for, so to speak. Had I been in a different frame of mind, perhaps I would’ve enjoyed those more.

Conclusion: 3.5 stars

I probably wouldn't recommend this book to people picking it up, hoping that the majority will be based on the mission and about 'life on Mars', as you will be disappointed. Unfortunately there isn't that much (maybe half?)

The portions of this book that are based on the mission simulation are absolutely fascinating! The pre-mission, the recruitment process, the actual time spent in the dome - fantastic! I only wish there'd been so many more pages written about it. That is what I picked this book up for.

A great amount of research has gone into writing this book, and most of it is pretty interesting, but, it is a bit messy. It jumps from thought to thought, going off on different tangents, often changing randomly between paragraphs without any warning - suddenly you're just reading something else and onto another topic entirely.

This book was clearly written while the author was grieving. Her brother's poor health and passing is mentioned a great deal, and I just didn't really understand how it 'fit' with this book and the subject matter.. I skipped these pages, along with several other sections, as they just weren't for me.

A lot of this book wasn't what I was expecting and not what I came for, so I was personally left feeling disappointed. However, the parts that I did like were highly enjoyable.

Enjoyed this memoir in essays of being a crew member of the HI-SEAS project, a NASA Mars simulation. Two other things I would recommend for readers are Meg Howry’s novel The Wanderers and the podcast The Habitat both about the same subject. I especially found the author’s observations on isolation to be particularly poignant during the Covid-19 pandemic. If anything, I think the publisher should consider putting this one in the hands of readers sooner than it’s currently scheduled release date.

Intriguing and insightful, Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars is a great addition to most general nonfiction collections.

Once Upon a Time I lived on Mars”, is the imaginative and intriguing name of this non-fiction book. And it’s something I once thought was guaranteed to happen in my life time- living on Mars. Like the author, when I was in the 4th grade, I was also fascinated and dazzled by space and space missions. I am 30 years older than author Kate Greene, inspired by watching Mercury lift-offs on a small tv in my grade school classroom. I couldn’t wait to fly to airlocked pods on faraway planets. Alas- I am still reading books about space. Fortunately, this is a wonderful book!

Subtitled “Space, Exploration, and Life on Earth, this fact-filled yet easy to understand book is a series of essays by the author. In 2013, Kate Greene was selected as a crew member for NASA’s newest Mars analog—a project called HI-SEAS. Its home base was a dome on the Hawai’ian volcano of Mauna Loa. The mission’s main goal was to test food systems, but there were many other research projects during the 4 month project. What this really meant, was that the author and other professionals basically “pretended” they were living on Mars. Cool, right?

Ms. Greene tells us about the project through a series of essays. I found this to make for an engaging read, instead of a linear,”Here’s what we did today” project, although she does give us many snapshots of her life “on Mars”. Many of the daily experiments involved food. Is it better for astronauts’ health to cook meals, and have a variety of meals instead of pouches of food and Tang? As the subtitle suggests, she uses her experiences to consider why we should have a space program, what we can learn, and how it may help ourselves and the world in ways we may not have readily considered. For example, what if artists- poets, writers, painter, musicians went along on the first missions to deep space? Wouldn’t their perspectives help us on earth to realize the immense grandeur of space? Would we see our Earth in a different way?

Thanks to the author for such an engaging and inspiring book and many thanks to the brave astronauts who rocketed to near space, the moon and the space stations and may we continue our journey to the stars. Thanks to Net Galley and St. Martins Press for an advance review copy. This is my honest review.

Once Upon A Time I Lived on Mars is a collection of essays by author Kate Greene, one of the thirteen people to take part in the HI-SEAS experiment meant to simulate life on Mars.  Alongside a crew of thirteen others, Greene spent approximately six months atop Mauna Loa, an Hawaiann volcano eight thousand feet above sea level.

Kate Greene is an accomplished science writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Slate and AEON to name a few.  Holding a lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut, when the opportunity arose to take part in a NASA-funded four month long Mars simulation, she jumped at the chance.

The book is broken up into a dozen different essays that relate to various aspects of her stay on “Mars”.  When speaking about each part, she relates it to events both current and in the past.  For example, she spends a whole chapter on human trials and how they would evolve over the years.  The worst being the Tuskegee syphilis experiment (seriously, go look this horrendous case up if you aren’t already aware).  She also tells of how astronauts are expected to combat boredom and menu fatigue, something that I hadn’t thought about.  You only get a finite number of meals in space and I can’t imagine there would be much room for creativity.  She speaks on the perils of isolation, the inconceivable amount of money it costs to fund space travel and the pitfalls of communication with our loved ones on Earth.

I thought this was an interesting read.  I enjoyed it more than Mary Roach’s “Packing for Mars”, which seemed to touch on a lot of what Greene explores in her book.  Greene does a tremendous amount of research noting several books, videos, interviews and articles where she was able to learn most of what she needed outside of her own experience.  I did expect a more linear approach that dealt mainly with her time as a member of the HI-SEAS project, so in that sense, I was a little disappointed, but by relating her time there to other events I ended up learning a lot more.

Kate Greene lived in a simulated nasa version of Mars.A group testing different aspects of what life is like for astronauts on actual advice.She eats certain food to see what will be the most sustaining g also fox that will keep their appetites up and the food interesting.
Not only are the participants isolated awY from family friendpds and jobs.Kate shares the emotional side the loneliness missing friends and family and for her personal issues with her wife who will get divorced.
A unique experiment that I found very interesting very challenging,#netgLley #st.martins

In this under-edited memoir, author Kate Green describes her experiences as a test subject for NASA, living in a simulated Martian colony for several months. This would have been fascinating if not for Greene's self-pity and her repetitive laments about the end of her marriage and search for self following her break-up with her wife. Greene's account skips from topic to topic, not all of which she makes relevant or interesting in relationship to the rest of the book, and her apparent lack of interest in the other crew members makes this come across as an exercise in self-ego-stroking.

I really enjoyed Greene's essays about space, time, and family. For the most part, the framework is a research study she participated in that attempted to replicate the effects of monotony in food diets on astronauts by assigning team of individuals to live in a bio-habitat in Hawaii for a four-month period. But within that framework, Greene explores the nature of time and distance on human relationships; the human desire to explore and to find a home; the ethics of funding space research and travel (and the nature of the relationship between NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX); queer identity; and much more. There's a real thoughtfulness to the pieces in this book, which I read over the course of a few weeks. I think it's a good idea to read this with a bit of space in between (no pun intended), but the overall bones of the book are good and interesting. It's a nice counterpoint to some of the more science-heavy space exploration titles out there, and Greene's background as a science reporter is put to good use here. Her references to the end of her marriage with her longtime partner and the death of her brother add a sense of resonance and wistfulness to these essays without being overbearing or maudlin.

Recommended for more thoughtful space enthusiasts, or for those who are interested in the sociological ramifications of space travel. Netgalley Review.