‘Orbital’ Imagines The Inner Lives Of Astronauts On The ISS

The award-winning novel explores the inner thoughts of astronauts during a single day aboard the International Space Station.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Flora Lichtman?

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• 1:24Ira Flatow?

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• 1:43Flora Lichtman?

  This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lixman. As promised, we have a special extended cup for you. Today on the podcast, a conversation about experiencing versus imagining life in space.

• 1:56Speaker 03

  I kept wondering, are my imaginative capacities going to be enough to escape the prism of my own non-astronaut-ness?

• 2:06Flora Lichtman?

  From Earth, living on the International Space Station can seem, I don't know, kind of magical. Floating through the day, the view out your window is stunning. You're having this experience only a handful of other people will ever get. But what's it really like? How does experiencing 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day change your perception of time? How do you cope with being so far from the people that you love? These are some of the questions explored in the new novel Orbital, which won the Booker Prize late last year. The author Samantha Harvey imagines the inner life of astronauts aboard the ISS, which is why I really wanted to put Samantha in conversation with an astronaut who lived that life.

• 2:51Flora Lichtman?

  So today, we have novelist Samantha Harvey, along with astronaut Katie Coleman. Katie spent almost six months on the International Space Station and is an author herself. She's joining us from New England Public Media in Amherst, Massachusetts. I am so thrilled to have you both on to talk about this book and life in space. Welcome to Science Friday.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Hi, hi Flora, hi Katie.

• 3:15Speaker 04

  So nice to be here.

• 3:17Flora Lichtman?

  Do you two know each other?

• 3:19Speaker 04

  I feel like we do. And yet, we actually just met at an interview before Christmas, you know, over the airwaves, so to speak. And I already wanted to be friends. In fact, I thought we already were just from reading the book.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  I really, this is the highlight of my career, I must say, that an astronaut wants to be my friend.

• 3:41Flora Lichtman?

  Samantha, why the ISS? Why this subject?

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I wanted really to write about the Earth more than about space at the beginning. I wanted to write something like a pastoral novel, something that was about the natural world. And I somehow ended up in low Earth orbit, a little bit unwittingly. And thought, well, you know, with the images of the Earth from there, and there's lots of footage that we can enjoy now, us Earthlings, they're just so...

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Extraordinary in every way. And they sort of asked me, I think, to to reevaluate my sense of my own place on the earth. And there was something in the feeling of that, of looking at those images, that was incredibly powerful and a driver to want to write about it. So I thought, well, I wonder if I can write this sort of pastoral novel, but from an extraordinary viewpoint. And once I decided that I wanted to to write about the earth from that distance, then I, you know, realized, of course, I need some kind of locus for that. So that ended up being the ISS. And then there was, you know, an enormous amount of research that I had to do to set it from there. But the but the impetus for the project was

• 4:57Speaker 03

  really an emotional one, just wanting to capture in words, the extraordinary view of the planet and what I felt when I looked at it.

• 5:07Flora Lichtman?

  I want to talk about this exact thing, because early on in the book, one of the astronauts laments that it's difficult to put the experience into words. So you write, she finds she often struggles for things to tell people at home, because the small things are too mundane, and the rest is too astounding, and there seems to be nothing in between. And I, when I read this, I thought this was funny, because I was like, well, that's, of course, exactly what this book does so beautifully, is to put it into words. And I'm wondering, Katie, does this ring true to you, that it's it's hard to sort of explain what it's like to be up there?

• 5:46Speaker 04

  It definitely is. And I think, more importantly, each of us has our own experience up there. And I'll say, you know, not always with the skills to express that. And so, you know, every part of it isn't my experience. But it for me, actually, it helped me sort of go back to the space station and feel like I was back there. But I feel like Samantha brought up these different points of view for people to try them on, whether they're astronauts who've lived up there, or people on earth wondering what it's like to be up there. So she's just, I think she lays out some of the possibilities.

• 6:24Flora Lichtman?

  Samantha, was this part of the challenge of writing the book, actually sort of translating this otherworldly, rare experience into words?

• 6:35Speaker 03

  I mean, yes, but of course I haven't had the experience, albeit that I did do a lot of reading of astronauts' journals and the books that they've written. So I think a lot of that translation was from imagery that I could see online and translating from an emotion in myself that was arising and trying to put that into words, try to sort of create what for me was as much a painting as it was a novel and maybe as much a piece of music. I feel like of all the novels I've written, it's the one that sort of most makes contact with the other, with other art forms.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  So I think this was me trying to translate from imagery and from emotion and obviously not from experience because I haven't experienced it myself. So it's so interesting to me to know what it's really like. You know, it's something I can never experience. I will never be able to go there. So speaking to Katie is so fascinating to me and it feels like, you know, there's my realm, the book that I've written, which is functioning entirely in the realm of the imagination. And then there's the realm of experience and I'm interested in how those two things speak to each other.

• 7:52Flora Lichtman?

  I'm interested in that, too. I mean, Katie, did reading Samantha's imagined version lead you to realize or sort of learn anything new about your own experience?

• 8:04Speaker 04

  It absolutely did. Samantha brought me back to so many little moments and touchpoints that it really helped me sort of re-experience my life on the space station. And it was everything from, I mean, we wake up in the morning and you always look at the morning messages. And she had some expression like, you know, the, you know, the sort of greeting from the ground of the morning mail on the computer. And I, it just was this really delightful way to say it that I really loved. So I just really, you know, there's all sorts of little bookmarks and I have places where I wrote no, you know, or just an N, right?

• 8:42Flora Lichtman?

  Really? Where you wrote no.

• 8:45Speaker 04

  She said something about, you know, someone steadied themself. And I, and I just thought, hmm, I don't think I ever steadied myself. And it's because in my, the way I think of steadying, it's, it has to do with those little toys that like kind of almost fall down and then right themselves and that it has to do with gravity. Whereas I just don't, I mean, I, since we never quite fall over, I don't think we need steadied. And, and it wasn't that I thought, oh, that's wrong. It's more, I thought, how interesting, you know, why doesn't that ring true?

• 9:19Speaker 03

  It's, um, it's really interesting to hear you say that. And when I was writing the book, the thing I was most acutely aware of all the time was that although I can do my research, ultimately this is an imaginative project. And so I can only bring myself to it. And I am so fundamentally and constitutionally not an astronaut. You know, there's, there's not.

• 9:45Speaker 04

  I don't know, Sam.

• 9:46Flora Lichtman?

  How do you mean?

• 9:46Speaker 04

  I think that jury is out.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  I mean, okay, I'm not practical. I am travel sick.

• 9:57Speaker 04

  Me too, sometimes. Seasick, anyway.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Are you? That's interesting.

• 10:03Speaker 03

  I am emotionally not terribly robust when it comes to quite sort of overwhelming experiences. I think I would just spend my time in tears. There's a character in the book who is one of the female astronauts husbands. And I'm him, basically. He's this sort of guy who lives in a field in the countryside and, and just imagines himself going into space and going mad and thwarting the mission. And that would be me, I think. So I, I kept wondering, are my imaginative capacities going to be enough to, to escape this, the prism of, of my own non astronaut-ness? So it's, it's so, you know, this, this was really in my mind the whole time I was writing, can I do this? Is this a step too far?

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Is this a set of characters I really am not equipped to write about? To know where it does chime and where it doesn't chime is so fascinating to me.

• 10:59Speaker 04

  Well, I'm looking at just two pages and I have, I don't know, six things underlined that delighted me. Okay.

• 11:06Flora Lichtman?

  Read them. What are they?

• 11:10Speaker 04

  Let's see. They're looking at the typhoon and Pietro says when he comes to join her, he's joining Nell at the window. They watch it hone in on the Philippines and Taiwan and the coast of Vietnam. And to me, it wasn't exactly what you were talking about there with the typhoon. It was the fact that this is what watching TV together is like up there is that somebody says, hey, come, come look out the window together. And you had this great ways of saying, you know, as we come across the typhoon, you know, every orbit of 90 minutes, you know, this typhoon, that's another 90 minutes bigger because of course it's growing. And it just delighted me to think, well, you know, the reason it's hard to step away from the window is because, or fly away from the window, is because everything

• 11:53Speaker 04

  is changing every orbit. And every time you see it, it's different by definition, different light, different things going on there. And then, let's see, there was all sorts of rules that were being put down about which you're supposed to use the toilet of your country. And so the US people should use the US one, you know, the Russians should use the Russian one. And it really expresses what really happens is that the crew is just going to be one crew and we're all from the place below and proud of the exact place we come from down there. And you write, you know, on the craft's internal cameras, mission control watches the crew in flagrant disregard of these edicts. And there's no point in trying to make it any different. I have it underlined here. Astronauts and cosmonauts

• 12:38Speaker 04

  are much like cats, they conclude, intrepid, cool, and can't be herded. And I just now read the last one. This is pages 84 to 85. And they're talking about scuba diving, but I think they're also talking about being in space. And Just the depth of the color blue, Nell agrees. Just the light, the color, the creatures, the coral, the sounds, just everything. Pietro agrees. Just everything. And so even though they're talking about what they see when they scuba dive, these are two people in space that I think emotionally are expressing like where we are,

• 13:21Speaker 04

  the way we feel, everything from living here to the earth right outside our window. You know, it's just everything. So I really loved it.

• 13:33Flora Lichtman?

  Sam, what's it like for you to hear Katie, an astronaut who has lived this life, respond to your book in this way?

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. It makes me feel quite tearful.

• 13:46Speaker 03

  It's really magical. And actually, when I was writing the book or when it came out, I think somebody mentioned to me the prospect of sending it to an astronaut or an astronaut reading it. And I thought, oh, God, I hope no astronaut ever reads it.

• 14:05Flora Lichtman?

  When we come back, we'll find out why Samantha Harvey hoped no astronaut would ever read her book on astronauts.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  Although I loved writing it, it also felt continually like an act of trespass.

• 14:24Speaker 05

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• 15:09Speaker 05

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• 16:16Speaker 04

  So I have to ask him. So I know when I wrote my book, you know, I actually was, I would think, oh, what if other astronauts read this? Will they think, oh, that's not exactly right? Will they think, you know, oh, that's too much to say? Or, you know, and I wrote this book with someone else, a co-writer, and she said, Katie, everyone has that hundred people that they hear in their ear. Did you hear us in your ear?

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did a little bit. I did. And I could sort of, because I, I felt that while I was writing the book, that although I loved writing it, and although I was very committed to it, it also felt continually like an act of trespass. That I was writing about something I had no right to write about. Um, because it's something I can't ever experience. And that's a funny, that's a funny thing, because I've written, all of my books are about things I've never experienced. Um, that, that's what I love to do. I don't really like to write autobiographically. So I don't know what that sense of trespass was, except that I suppose astronauts as a group are fairly, are fairly formidable.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  They feel it in the public consciousness. I think that's why it's so amazing to have this personal exchange with you, Katie, because it, I, I, you, astronauts exist in the, um, public imagination, I think, as almost mythical beings. Um, I think, you know, when we're children, you know, who often want to be astronauts, or at least we're very aware of that as some sort of job, but not a real job anyone could ever have. And, um, I, and I, I think some of that has carried through for me. I think I felt that when I was writing the book, that of course, of course, you're not mythical beings, but there's something mythical about, about space travel.

• 18:08Speaker 03

  There's something in the public imagination there that feels sort of inaccessible. And I think I was picking up on that while I was writing the book. And at the same time, trying to use that, you know, trying to, um, exploit that sense of um, the dreamscape, the, the otherness of it, the extraordinariness, and to, to create a, a kind of suspended narrative. So I, it, it feels like a real culmination of, of everything to, to be able to speak to you about it.

• 18:38Speaker 04

  Well, it's such a special world. And, but I think that you've done exactly the right thing. And, and it's maybe one of the reasons that we're here on Science Friday is that we have to make, you know, the impossible seem like it's accessible to everyone.

• 18:54Flora Lichtman?

  You know, what I love about this book so much, and what I love about the work that you do, Katie, is that you're humanizing science. And science isn't always humanized very well, which I personally feel like is a big missed opportunity.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  Me too.

• 19:11Flora Lichtman?

  And Sam, I wondered if, you know, now that you've immersed yourself in this astronaut world, if you, if you might take on another science-y subject in a future novel, or how you think about this intersection.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  Hmm, that's a good question. I mean, I tend not to tread the same ground twice with my novels, probably much to my editor's dismay. But one of the great joys of this book has been this intersection with the sciences, which is the part of the process that daunted me the most, because I'm evidently not a scientist. But it's been the, the sort of, the way the scientific world has taken it in and been welcoming to it on the whole. People have been incredibly receptive to it, which I've found very generous of spirit, in a sense, because you have this imposter, you know, coming in, making things up about

• 20:07Speaker 03

  your field. And I think that that's been received with an incredible amount of graciousness, actually. And that's been really, really gratifying. And I think that these intersections are really important. And I don't know how we make them happen more between the arts and the sciences. And I know they already do happen somewhat, but I think that they, they really matter. And especially as we're moving now into a sort of a new era of space travel. And it can be quite bewildering, I think, for a layperson or for the public to understand what's going on. Or, I mean, of course, at a surface level, they can understand.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  But, you know, what it's like to be in space as a domestic environment, what it's like to live there, to just clarify, illuminate certain ideas and certain realities around this, I think is, is really important. So I don't know if I'll ever do something like this again. But certainly, having done it this one time, has been probably the most expansive experience I've had of publication.

• 21:23Flora Lichtman?

  Samantha, before we go, you've talked about how this book, in some ways, is a eulogy to the ISS, which is almost at the end of its life. NASA has plans to decommission it in 2030, and then it will eventually break up in the atmosphere. After having spent so much time with it, will you be sad to see it go?

• 21:44Speaker 03

  I'll be really sad to see it go. I think because I have a slightly sort of romanticized idea of everything, I do see the ISS already with a kind of nostalgia of something that belongs to an era of peaceful cooperation between humans. And I see it as this sort of lovely, a kind of time capsule, almost, something that carries the hopes and dreams of a post-Cold War era. And I think that we're moving into something quite different now. And the unknownness of that can be unsettling. So I think that I will feel rather sad when

• 22:25Speaker 03

  it's gone. I did ask, when Katie and I last spoke, I think I asked you, Katie, if you would feel sad about its deorbiting. And you seem to be more sanguine about it and less romantically involved somehow than I am. So I appreciate, again, that my ideas of it are somewhat couched in a romanticized ideology of it, and maybe not in the reality of it and the fact that we need to move on.

• 22:54Speaker 04

  I do think about it a little differently. And I would just change a word in what you just said, that we have to move on. We get to move on. And so the ISS, now, if we could, we would probably build it differently, and less expensively, really, and have it be a more accessible place. So in a way, even though the ISS is going away, certainly, your book is a timeless snapshot of different points of view of what it's like to be a human in that special place.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Hmm, that's a really, that's a really wonderful coda, I think. And I think right there in that amendment from we have to move on to we get to move on is exactly why I'm not an astronaut and you are.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  I sort of think, oh, well, I guess we have to progress. If we must, then we will. Whereas I think that mindset that progress is positive, it's beautiful, it can be good. It's not always good, but it can be good. Is very much a part of this wonderful curiosity that it seems to be common among all astronauts and this willingness to embrace the new, which I think I unfortunately lack.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  I think you understood a lot.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 24:22Flora Lichtman?

  I think that's the perfect place to leave it. I have so enjoyed this conversation. Thank you both for taking the time to talk to us today.

• 24:31Speaker 04

  Well, thanks so much. It was, it takes me back and I really appreciate both of you for your role in doing that.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, thank you so much to you both.

• 24:41Flora Lichtman?

  Samantha Harvey is author of the Booker Prize winning novel Orbital. And Katie Coleman is a former NASA astronaut and author of the book Sharing Space: An Astronaut's Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change.

• 24:57Flora Lichtman?

  And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make this show happen, including

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Rasha Eridi.

• 25:04Speaker 06

  Sandy Roberts. Shoshana Buckstow. Danielle Johnson.

• 25:08Flora Lichtman?

  I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.