Orbital (2023)
By Samantha Harvey
Grove Press, 209 pages.
★★★★★
Do you ever imagine yourself on a spaceship speeding through the universe at warp speed? If you've ever watched Star Trek or Star Wars, I suspect you have. The closest thing we have to that kind of experience today is service aboard the International Space Station (ISS). What would it be like to spend months floating 250 miles above the earth?
Samantha Harvey gives us as good of an idea of what all but a few will ever experience. Her book Orbital is officially a novel, but it's a well-researched one that jives with accounts of what those who have been aboard the ISS say. Like the old TV show Dragnet used to proclaim, “only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.”
Floating is the wrong word. The ISS streaks across the sky at a clip of 17,000 mph, though near-zero gravity inside makes it seem like a gentle drift. Orbital gets its name from the fact that each 24 hours those on the station witness16 different sunrises and 16 different sunsets.
Harvey's remarkable novel reads like an extended prose poem. I call it “remarkable” because in many ways, life aboard the ISS is one of repetition and tedium. Her invented crew consists of two Russians (Anton and Roman), two Americans (Sean and Nell), an Italian (Pietro), and a Japanese woman, Chie. Harvey imagines what goes on in their minds and how they cope with what happens back on earth as they orbit. For instance, Chie’s mother dies unexpectedly and her grief is magnified by not being able to attend her cremation. Sean and Nell engage in an ontological debate. When she looks out of the portal at the vastness of space it makes her doubt the intentionality of any sort of creator. When she asks Sean how he can still believe when he looks at what she sees he replies, “How can I not?” Another watches an enormous typhoon gathering in the Indian Ocean and worries if a kind fisherman he befriended can survive it.
Being aboard the ISS commands mental and physical courage as well as the ability to adjust levels of awe, desire, and acceptance. Imagine donning a spacesuit to exit the station to spend hours doing repairs while wearing thick gloves knowing that one wrong move or the tiniest piece of space debris could puncture your pressurized suit and asphyxiate you before you could be reeled back inside. Most are nonchalant about that possibility and speak of their willingness to die to advance science. They know also that returning to earth has its perils. There are more than 200 million pieces of space junk–lost tools, cameras, rocket stages, exhaust particles–orbiting our planet at 25,000 mph. Not to mention that the crew are, in many ways, dying for science. The toll of weightlessness ages their bodies 5 to 10 years for each six months they are on board, cancer risks rise dramatically, and muscles atrophy though they vigorously exercise.
Even the mundane challenges. They must recycle and treat their own urine for drinking water, tether themselves in order to sleep, and box their waste to send back to earth on resupply ships. Flying across the ship to fetch a dropped chopstick or spoon requires dexterity and there’s no real way to tell up from down.
My admiration for such brave men and women soared as I read Orbital. So too did my regard for Harvey; she made her novel heart-throbbing thrilling, though not much actually happens. Above all, it made me think humans better start taking care of the planet. Those board the ISS saw themselves as training for the possibility that humans might one day need to abandon earth. I don't think many of us could handle such a journey.
Rob Weir
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