Thursday, January 22, 2026

Book 0 - Orbital

I finished reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Took too long to complete it; as I wrote before one can complete it in like 3 days, but that's not me. It's not that I do not like the book, I actually like it a lot. The book is quite different. There's no one driving plot. It tells the story of six astronauts in a space station over the course of 24 hours. There's no crisis they need to solve, no calamity to befall them. The only things of note are perhaps the Japanese astronaut losing her mother while in space, one of the Russian cosmonauts noticing a lump in his neck, a typhoon they're tracking in the pacific, but overall things are going as usual in the space station. The whole book was about their thoughts, their observations, and it feels quite meditative to me.

Being that they're in space, they don't have the concept of daytime and night-time as we do, but they still need to follow a 24-hour day at which time the space station will orbit Earth 16 times, which means they could see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets over Earth in the course of a day. I like how this book taught me and made me picture new things. Being that my geography is on the weak side, I had Google Maps on the ready when they're explaining the places they see. They wrote about proof of human existence on Earth is visible during night-time on Earth where lights from the cities shine. You cannot see borders of countries. The only visible border that they could see is during night-time between Pakistan and India because India has installed lights to mark their border - I really did not know this. Truly, I learn a lot. I learn about a Russian cosmonaut, Sergei Krikalev, who lost his country because of the dissolution of the Soviet Union while he's in space causing him to stay longer in space. It's interesting that all throughout Russia and USA disagreements, they all can still share a space station and work together, though the book did mention notice about certain things like the toilet in the Russian or American parts of the space station is off-limit to the others but the astronauts in the book didn't follow this rule because seriously if you're going to be in space with only a few people, in an environment where very few people could understand, in a place where you need to rely on each other, you really do need to be above all pettiness. Also another thing I learn is that astronaut can not return home alone, that's why the Russian cosmonaut who found the lump decided to keep it quiet because if he needs to be pulled back to earth, some of the others need to accompany him back home. Really there are many things I learn, like the shape of fire in microgravity - all very very interesting.

I really like the book a lot. I like the way it made me imagine things. Like I could imagine the fear one suddenly may have when they're doing the spacewalk, the same fear I felt watching Gravity - the unknownness, the dark, the feeling you're in a place where you could float away to nothingness. One night when I was lying on my bed trying to sleep, I somehow also came to understand how gravity can be something to be missed - just the act of standing, the solidness of planting your feet on the ground, feeling weight. I also like how the book has lines that made me feel like I want to highlight them. Lines like: the conquest of the void, a human being was not made to stand still (I still need to think about this one). There's also this observation from the husband of the other female astronaut who says some people have complicated inner lives that they need to simplify their outer things and there are others (like his wife) who somehow manage to simplify their inner lives so that their outer things can be ambitious and limitless. On first read, I thought I'm the first one with complicated inner life but then I thought could I sometime manage to have simple inner life because I do go on my adventures? Like there's moments where I manage to quiet all my noisy thoughts and feelings and go out there into the world. It's a really really good book and I really enjoyed every moment I spent with it.

:) eKa @ 9:13:00 PM •