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

By Kate Greene

‘Once Upon A Time I Lived on Mars is a book about the wonders of space, but even more so, it’s a triumphant account of what it means to be a thoughtful, messy, and ultimately hopeful human right here on spaceship Earth.’

– Juli Berwald, author of Spineless

When it comes to colonizing Mars, so often we focus on how to get there: the rockets, the engines, the fuel. Yet once we arrive, what will it actually be like?

In 2013, Kate Greene came one step closer to finding out. Along with five fellow crew members, she was chosen for NASA’s first HI-SEAS mission, a simulated Martian environment located on the slopes of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. For the next four months she lived, worked and slept in an isolated white dome, conducting a sleep study on her crew mates but also gaining incredible insight into human behaviour in tight quarters, as well as the nature of the boredom, dreams, isolation and irritation that arise despite the promise of scientific progress and glory.

In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Greene uses her experience to contemplate humanity’s broader impulse to explore. By exploring what kind of wisdom we will take to Mars and elsewhere in the Universe, she provides a thought-provoking examination of our time in space right now, as a pre-Mars species, poised on the edge, readying for launch.