Far Beyond the Moon

Throughout the book, Munns and Nickelsen weave an entertaining and readable story, supporting their arguments with a balanced blend of technical sources and autobiographical accounts, seasoned with a sprinkling of thought-provoking science fiction references. . . . As greenhouse gases suffuse the Earth’s atmosphere and plastics churn through the planet’s oceans, we would all do well to reconsider our own relationships to waste in the magnificent life support system we inhabit. For this exercise, Far Beyond the Moon offers excellent food for thought.

The first book-length historical treatment of the topic, this frank, unflinching look at an unglamorous, sometimes embarrassing, yet absolutely essential aspect of space technology aims to remove what the authors convincingly argue has been a limiting stigma. We need to talk about shit in space, and Far Beyond the Moon is a thought-provoking conversation starter. . . . An engaging and broadly focused read, Far Beyond the Moon gathers a clutch of important but nearly forgotten stories, and Munns and Nickelsen succeed in their mission to break the cycle of silence surrounding waste in space.

David P. D. Munns and Kärin Nickelsen dedicate themselves to the problem of extraterrestrial excrement with a pointed pen and a palpable lust for the tasteless. . . . . The authors present an extremely instructive book, which is also to be welcomed for the fact that it draws the attention of the ‘daredevil men’ and their ‘flying rockets’ to a hitherto neglected, seemingly profane, but hardly less exciting field of the history of space technology.

This book tells an intriguing and salient story of the history of planning for humans living in space with zero provisioning and zero gravity, from the golden age of space flight in the 1960s to the tentative culmination of ecological life support in the project of Biosphere 2 in the 1990s. The narrative is entertaining and immensely educating. Far Beyond the Moon offers a witty and accessible story that holds all the answers to one of the most interesting questions about space flight: what to do with human waste in space.

This book is a powerful and much-needed antidote to ‘macho’ histories of the Space Age. In place of shining rockets and square-jawed astronauts, Munns and Nickelsen give us a masterful guide to the earthier aspects of humankind’s attempts to live in space. Insightful, witty, and richly detailed, this study shows us that the problems of sanitation and waste management have been every bit as important to our conquest of space as rocket technology and moon walks.

In telling the history of human space flight from the 'bottom up'—from a focus on human waste as opposed to human wits—Munns and Nickelson offer an insightful look at Soviet and US experiments in interstellar sustainability. They describe experiments with closed systems in refreshingly open ways that illustrate how this unglamorous research captured imaginations beyond space agencies, including science fiction authors and projects like Biosphere 2.

This book explores fascinating overlaps in personnel, facilities, and concepts between exobiology (later astrobiology) research and the fascinating, practical efforts to create life support systems for human long-term survival in outer space.