Guide to Survive in Space (Jordi Pereyra)

Traveling to other planets involves using powerful means of transportation capable of ripping us out of Earth’s gravity and taking us to the surface of other worlds. But engineers know very well that this is only a small part of the problem. The necessary spaceships and rockets will end up doing their job and depositing us in the expected place. However, once in it, we will only have two alternatives: take with us everything we need to survive, or exploit local resources to make our presence more sustainable.

Taking advantage of the resources of another planet so that we can live on it indefinitely is a considerable problem, if only because the systems used for it should not be able to fail, thus guaranteeing our survival. Engineers have already designed equipment to extract oxygen, water and other essential elements from its surface and atmosphere.

But what would happen if we fell on an unknown planet, due to the failure of our ship? What would happen if we did not have specific devices to sustain our existence? How could we survive? Jordi Pereyra, engineer and science communicator has prepared a book in which he tells how to achieve it. The author, who frames his story with a fictitious conversation with a robot, and who shows an extreme situation in which an astronaut ends up as a castaway stranded on an inhospitable planet where life does not exist, throughout his pages unravels the problems of subsistence that this would be found, and how it could solve them thanks to chemistry, biology and engineering.

Taking on the role of this space castaway, and with minimal resources, we will discover how to produce drinking water, either from ice, rocks or our own urine; how to generate oxygen; how to produce food thanks to a small space garden; how to obtain energy, for example in the form of fuel that we can burn; how to build a shelter that protects us; and how to extract useful metals from the minerals around us. In essence, the rocks and atmosphere of the remote area should be all we need to survive.

Each of the solutions provided by Pereyra is accompanied by a complete scientific reasoning: with the help of geology and chemistry, they will allow us to successfully overcome the bad experience of having ended up abandoned in a remote world. For the reader, in the comfort of his home, the author’s ideas can be equally useful and interesting. Not surprisingly, some of the methods used are applied right here on Earth, and to a large extent, they are the basis on which the appearance of human civilization was based.

Rocks and knowledge of chemistry: it is all we need to survive. And of course, the book by Jordi Pereyra, which includes an extensive bibliography and a section of color photographs that demonstrate the existence on other planets of many of the minerals that we will need to create our small living environment, until someone comes to our rescue.

An extremely attractive work in its approach, interesting and informative for any type of science-loving reader.

Paid. 2022. Contexts Collection. Softcover, 244 pages. ISBN: 978-84-4933-975-2