I enjoyed reading the science fiction 2023 novel by Samantha Harvey while on the long flights to London last week. It is the story of six astronauts in orbit 250 miles above the Earth for 9 months. There are two Russians, four Westerners (Japanese, American, British, Italian) – four men and two women. They are in one of the international space stations and on a routine mission. The goal is to study the effects of long-term space travel on humans. The astronauts are also tending to experiments in the station and observing the earth and its atmosphere. They see many sunrises and sunsets every 24 hours as they hurtle through orbit at 17,500 miles/hour. They complete 16 orbits in 24 hours.
It was a good book to read on a plane. I felt a bit like them. Trapped in a small living space with others, not for nine months, but for five hours (Tashkent to Istanbul). There are the same problems, how to dispose of waste, dealing with medical emergencies, controlling your emotions when the woman in front of you is leaning fully back in her seat and you can barely have enough space to write this blog post. I understand the tight margins of the airline business, but what would it take to take out a few rows of seats and make the flight more pleasant for everyone.
I didn’t know how a lack of gravity harms the human body. The astronauts need to exercise every day to keep their muscles from wasting away. Without resistance, the muscles turn to jelly. Astronauts also suffer from “space headaches”. I get a lot of headaches when I fly, and I am never sure why. I read it was from dehydration. In microgravity, arteries thicken and stiffen and the muscles of the heart weaken. Six months in space ages a person 5 to 10 years. Bones deteriorate, vision weakens, etc. I guess the only long-term impact I’ll have from this flight is perhaps catching a cold. You can hear coughs, up and down the plane. One positive impact of space is for older people, joint pain goes away and it makes them feel young again. Without gravity providing resistance in the joints, there is no pain.
It is funny that you would think that astronauts would live a life of adventure and exploration, but most of the time, they are in cramped spaces and doing routine tasks to keep humans alive in such a harsh environment. The knowledge gained from the six astronauts in the space station will inform scientists how to keep humans alive and well on longer missions. In the novel, a ship carrying four astronauts is on its way to the moon for a landing mission. It is cool that today, there is always at least one human off Earth in orbit. I see in the near future humans developing permanent colonies/stations on the moon and Mars. I hope this happens in my lifetime.
The astronauts see huge natural phenomena from a different perspective. The Northern Lights are towers of light 200 kilometers high. In the book, they are photographing a Category 5 typhoon heading towards the Philippines. Harvey mixes in space exploration history, astronauts’ memories of their lives on Earth, interactions between them, and interesting facets of life in the space station. I think she spent a bit too much time describing what the astronauts were seeing of the globe from their windows. Yes, it was poetic and majestic and gave her ideas to riff on for chapters, but after a while, for someone who is knowledgeable about geography, it did get a bit repetitive.
The author mentions the famous Apollo 11 photo taken by Michael Collins (above). The photo shows the lunar module carrying Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and just beyond the moon, the earth, a blue half-sphere appearing as the moon does to us. It is the only photo of all of humankind, except for one person, Collins, who took the photo. He also spent time on the backside of the moon, being the only human on that side with the infinity of space beyond. It is crazy how precarious life is on Earth, a relatively thin atmosphere surrounding the surface that sustains us with everything else in space having no life. I never thought much about the photo, but it is amazing!
Overall it was a good read and not too long of a book. She might have had some stuff happen out of the ordinary, but I guess it was realistic fiction in that it was a routine flight. It made me want to go back and learn more about the history of moon landing and early NASA space flights.
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