laura’s Reviews > Orbital > Status Update

‘So strenuously unrobotic is the astronaut’s heart that it leaves the earth’s atmosphere and it presses out—gravity stops pressing in and the counterweight of the heart starts pressing out, as if suddenly aware it is part of an animal, alive and feeling. An animal that does not just bear witness, but loves what it witnesses.’

‘What are you anyway as an astronaut but a conduit—you are selected for your non-stick temperament, maybe one day a robot could do your job and maybe it will; you have to wonder. […] But what would it be to cast out into space creations that had no eyes to see it and no heart to fear or exult in it?’

‘[…] they don’t come into space to be encouraged. They come out of a drive for more, more of everything, more knowledge and humility. Speed and stillness. Distance and closeness. More less, more more. And what they find is that they are small, no, nothing.’

‘[…] This is the way it goes—and then another day they look into the face of one of those five people and there in their way of smiling or concentrating or eating is everything and everyone they’ve ever loved, all of it, just there, and humanity, in coming down in its essence to this handful of people, is no longer a species of confounding difference and distance but a near and graspable thing.’ (3/3)

‘When they miss people and things, when earth feels so far away that depression washes over them for days and even the view of the sun setting over the Arctic isn’t enough to lift them, then they have to be able to see the face of one of the other on board and find something there that keeps them going. Some solace. They don’t always.’ (2/3)

‘They are each to the other a representative of the human race—they each have to suffice for billions of people. They have to make do in lieu of every earthly thing—families, animals, weather, sex, water, trees. Walking. Some days they just want to walk, or lie down.’ (1/3)