orbital quotes & analysis

“They were all familiar with Winnie-the-Pooh in one form or another in their five different countries… the same small animated bear there in some domain of their hearts.”

micro

• collective childhood experience

• emphasises commonalities - transcend national boundaries

macro

• shared emotional and cultural foundations beneath geopolitical differences

• collective humanity > national identity

• critique of political division & challenges veracity of cultural distinction and difference

“You look back at the vast spread of the space station and in this moment it, not earth, feels like home.” 🤷🏻‍♀️

micro

• narrative pov immerses reader, universal experience

• juxtaposition - earth / ISS

• paradox - vast ISS - perception shapes reality

macro

• human identity based on experiences and perception

• concerns about human displacement

“All humans ever did and were will be a brief light that flickers on and off again on one single day in the middle of the year, remembered by nothing.” 🙌

micro

• cosmic timeline

• juxtaposition - vastness of cosmos / fleeting nature of humanity

macro

• challenges anthropocentric assumptions about human importance

• ephemerality, fragility and impermanence

• proposes human humility

“Because of ongoing political disputes, please use your own national toilet.” 🙌

micro

• reframing political tension - earth → ISS

• underscores historical context

• humour mocks superficiality of divisions

• juxtaposition - pettiness of bathrooms / vasness of space

macro

• contrast - intimate shared environment / national toilets

• influences A’s perception of division - trivial

• critiques arbitrary and absurd geopolitical divisions

• esp on ISS - depends on global cooperation

“Even at night there’s only one man-made border in the whole of the world… That’s all civilisation has to show for its divisions, and by day even that has gone… It’s the humanless simplicity of land and sea.”

micro

• ISS unique vantage point - distance

• cosmic perspective - earth appears unified

• contrast - humanless simplicity / human construct of divisions

• pointlessness of borders

macro

• political borders disappear from orbit - illusions

• ingrained in society but not unalterable - hope

• borders not inherent, humans lost sight of interconnection

“We are one… Everything we have up here is only what we reuse and share. We can’t be divided, this is the truth. We won’t be because we can’t be. We drink each other’s recycled urine. We breathe each other’s recycled air.” 🙌

+ no quotation marks, narrative POV

micro

• free indirect discourse between As - merging, commonalities, unity

• physically/biologically reliant on each other in shared environment

• repetition we - communal existence

macro

• microcosm - symbolic of broader interconnectedness

• human survival depends on cooperation > division

“She hears a cicada, never before would you hear a cicada this late in the year, it’s so warm now all the time that they don’t know when to die.”

micro

• ecological disruption and environmental imbalance

• symbolism - cicadas represent all life on earth

• effect of man’s hubris

macro

• consequences of humans affect all beings & interrupt natural systems

• urges evironmental responsibility

“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.” 🙌

“He’s never sure if man’s lust for space is curiosity or ingratitude.”

micro

• repetition - emphasis on man’s insatiable ambition

• juxtaposition - curiosity / ingratitude - perspective, moral ambiguity

• juxtaposition - speed / stillness - contradictory nature of space travel (track typhoon from space / contribute to emissions)

macro

• critique on man’s ambition

• paradox of space travel - limitations of technology

• tension - humanity’s complex rs with earth

“Nobody saw the rapid growth of this typhoon… a charging force closing on land.”

“Meteorologists have decided upon calling it a super-typhoon; they speak of its rapid intensification that’s left everyone ill-prepared, and of the increased regularity of storms like these.”

micro

• charging force - unpredictability, intensity, acceleration

• nature’s indifference - less responsible are more vulnerable

macro

• consequences - broader implications

• urges environmental responsibility

• inability to protect filipinos - human overconfidence in tech advancements

“Because who can look at man’s neurotic assault on the planet and find it beautiful? Man’s hubris. A hubris so almighty it’s matched only by its stupidity. All these phallic ships thrust into space are surely the most hubristic of them all, the totems of a species gone mad with self love.”

micro

• neurotic assault - irrational, destructive

• space exploration as epitome of self love - anthropocentric society

macro

• man’s hubris is uncontrollable

• critiques anthropocentric views that place human desire > planetary heatlh

“Field of junk” “scene of a crime” “v1rgin up-for-sale wilderness” “new domain ripe for the taking” 

“the planet held hostage by humans, a gun to its vitals”

micro

• evocative imagery - gravity of earth’s climate crisis and humans’ insatiable greed

macro

• critiques neglect of responsibility for own actions

• condemns detrimental human impact and exploitation

• concers about ethical responsibility

“They feel space trying to rid them of the notion of days… They cling to their twenty-four-hour clock because it’s all the feeble little time-bound body knows – sleep and bowels and all that is leashed to it.”

Structure - 16 orbits in 24 hours

micro

• evocative imagery - cling, intrinsically intertwined and dependent on time; time bound body, fragility and instability

• vital organs bound to time

• body struggles to create meaning without it

• 16 90-minute-days in 24 hours

macro

• humanity dependence on earth & man made constructs

• humankind’s fragility - belong on earth

• human attempts to impose order on indifferent universe that functions beyond human comprehension

“Is it necessarily the case that the further you get from something the more perspective you have on it?...if you could get far enough away from the earth you’d be able finally to understand it – to see it with your own eyes as an object, a small blue dot, a cosmic and mysterious thing. Not to understand its mystery, but to understand that it is mysterious.” 🤷🏻‍♀️

micro

• distance - provides clarity on earth’s mysteriousness

• descriptive imagery - minimises humanity’s scale

macro

• challenges distance = understanding

• distance doesn’t provide answers, but reveals complexity and mystery of existence

“Every single other person currently in existence, to mankind’s knowledge is contained in that image; only one is missing, he who made the image…In that sense, the more enchanting thing about Collins’s image is that, in the moment of taking the photograph, he is really the only human presence it contains.”

micro

• paradox - existence (not in the photo, and only one in it)

• paradox of As - physically distanced and inextricably tied to Earth

• focus on absence

macro

• paradoxical nature of human existence - interconnected yet alone

• perspective is limited and exclusionary

“They don’t know how it can be that their view is so endlessly repetitive and yet each time, every single time, newly born.”

micro

• repetitive imagery - continuous orbits

• paradox - repetitive and newly born

• cyclical language mirrors orbital motion

macro

• perspective shaped by attention and perception

• save view renewed through consciousness

• challenges linear understandings, explores cyclical temporality

“He’d not known how capacious it was, the heart. Nor how in love he could be with a ball of rock; it keeps him awake at night, the vitality of this love.” 🙌

micro

• overview effect - A’s awe and magnitude of love

• interconnectedness of humanity with earth (even when human connection fails him)

macro

• perspective from space (earth) - object → deeply meaningful & emotionally significant

• reverence for planet

• environmental awareness as love/devotion

• distance intensifying rather than diminishing connection

“They are like fortune tellers, the crew. Fortune tellers who can see and tell the future but do nothing to change or stop it.”

“They’re humans with a godly view and that’s the blessing and also the curse.”

micro

• metaphor - powerful, godly vantage point, yet powerless to intervene

• humans playing god - unnatural, critique

• guilt experiences as they can’t intervene - those watching climate change

• contrast - knowledge / action

macro

• perspective can provide understanding (empowering) but not the ability to create a tangible change (burdensome)

• tension between awareness and agency

“All beings are living in life-support machines called bodies and all of these will fail eventually.”

micro

• metaphor - bodies doomed from the beginning, impermanence, fragility

• all beings - universalises vulnerability

• eventually - inevitability, humans powerless compared to cosmos

macro

• fragility of human existence

• reframes anthropocentric views, encourages humility, emphasises ephemerality/fleetingness of humanity