Orbital

I loved this short tale of six people in a spaceship as they revolved around Earth. It felt like a love letter to the Earth and to nature 🌍

It’s a short book, only 136 pages, but the magical descriptions of the grandness of space make you want to learn about the constellations and stars and visit every country. As the astronauts spin around the continents, they jump along with the changing of seasons, viewing the splashes of infinite colours: “The Earth is a burst of hopeful colour.” The narrative captures the contrast between how incredible the universe is, and yet how little we are on Earth and how little we likely know.

Time plays a large factor throughout the book; every 24 hours for the characters is the equivalent of 16 days and 16 nights on Earth. They follow a typhoon as it hits the planet, taking satellite pictures and observing the speed of the destruction on the land below.

There’s a theme of theology versus science throughout. I loved the passage around the concept of how humans search for heaven above in the sky, yet when in space and looking down, it feels that Earth itself is the heaven. There’s a dialogue of a conversation between one astronaut and his younger daughter, who asks him if all progress is good, and how to determine what progress is negative; for instance the private corporations planning to pay for advertisements to stream across the sky. I didn’t know much about this and have been researching it, it’s bonkers and super dystopian!

It was super interesting hearing about the routines astronauts must maintain up in space, from needing to exercise due to the lack of gravitational force on their bodies, to the rigorous testing of how plants and mice survive up in space. Also to hear how the astronauts (Western) and cosmonauts (Russian) were forbidden to mix, but did so anyway.

Admittedly, there wasn’t much plot; and it felt more like a written documentary, and a few of my friends struggled with reading it. I mixed between reading it and listening to the audiobook, which I would recommend as it’s more like a long podcast.