Ready to colonize Mars?

Serves as a practical guide to spaceflight | Full of anecdotes and tips for those planning their own space adventure

Heidelberg | New York, 28 April 2021

Whether or not you are about to start your space adventure and have booked your ticket, The Spacefarer's Handbook by Bergita and Urs Ganse provides unusual insights into the practical and scientific dimensions of space travel.

The authors, a sibling pair of an astrophysicist and a space physician, have written a book that covers all relevant aspects of space travel: from spaceship construction, via life in space and medicine in weightlessness to the search for extraterrestrial life. Filled with anecdotes from real astronauts, easily understandable scientific background information, and graphics, the book breaks down complex topics into six chapters that make for an entertaining read for a general audience.

The book can be read as a step-by-step guidebook to becoming a spacefarer or simply out of interest. It elaborates on the construction and navigation of a spacecraft, daily life in space with all its practicalities from clothing to social life, moreover on medicine in space, and the exploration and colonization of new galaxies and planets. Everybody who dreamed of being an astronaut or is curious about space travel will enjoy The Spacefarer's Handbook.

"Despite human spaceflight being a gigantic interdisciplinary and international masterpiece, it all comes down to basic science.", write the authors. In their book, they "want to unveil some of the spaceflight magic and correct the belief that only superheroes can fly to space, as well as the misconception that spacecraft only work when an alien artefact from the future grants its power."

This book is “highly recommended for everyone who wants to fly to space and all passengers of our mothership Earth” by Hans Schlegel, a former ESA astronaut, and a veteran of two NASA Space Shuttle missions.

About the authors

Professor Bergita Ganse is an Orthopaedic Surgeon and a Physiologist with a research focus on Space Medicine and the musculoskeletal system in spaceflight. She is a full professor for Innovative Implant Development at Saarland University in Germany. Bergita is a co-investigator of an ISS experiment and involved in large international studies working with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Dr Urs Ganse is a Theoretical Space Physicist with a research focus on plasma simulations. After studying physics and obtaining his doctorate from the University of Würzburg, Germany, on solar radio bursts, he has worked as a postdoc in Finland and South Africa. In his current position as a University Researcher at the University of Helsinki, he uses supercomputers to model the near-Earth plasma environment and its interactions with Earth's magnetic field.

About the book

Bergita Ganse, Urs Ganse
The Spacefarer’s Handbook
2020, 307 p., 150 illus., 122 illus. in color
Softcover  €22,99 | £19.99 | $27.99
ISBN 978-3-662-61701-4
Also available as an eBook