Yesterday Jezz Bezos’ spacecraft Blue Origin rocket and capsule returned to earth safely after a short journey into space, a trip that has been billed as a milestone for gender equality because of the spacecraft’s all-women crew. And a celebrity crew no less, consisting of pop-singer Katy Perry, American TV anchor Gayle King; Lauren Sánchez, a former journalist and Jeff Bezos’ fiancée; Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist; Amanda Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist; and Kerianne Flynn, a movie producer.
The word crew, it seems to me, is rather a stretch as the entire trip lasted a blisteringly-short ten minutes and the women were rich space tourists rather than highly-skilled operators. During their brief sojourn, they had time to hold up a patch signifying the importance of the jaunt to the Bahamas (Bowe was the first Bahamian in space), belt out a quick song (Perry), and whip up some weightless handstands. While the cost per handstand has not been disclosed, we can all be fairly certain that it was mind-boggling.
Assuming you don’t have pockets as deep as the ocean’s unexplored trenches, it’s unlikely you’ll be heading out on a similar trip anytime soon. However, we have a quick hack to help you experience outer space yourself!
Last year Samanatha Harvey won the Booker prize with her mesmerizingly-beautiful novel Orbital which, if you haven’t read it, we highly recommend! Set in a space station orbiting the earth, it’s an experiential book packed with luscious description and it’s probably like nothing you’ve ever read before. An immersive populated atlas of the world through an ever-shifting long-distance lens, a kaleidoscopic Northern lights of lyrical prose, the novel has an incredible sense of place from beyond our atmosphere. From its pages (of which there are less than 140), you’re watching the ceaseless turning of the earth, noting the terrain below and musing on its glories from every angle as if our planet were a small animal or natural history specimen, a luscious living being and a mass of contradictions in perfect harmony. Nothing much happens and yet it resonates with everything: it’s gentle and light yet rich and deep, static yet sweeping.
You could also watch The Martian, a stunning and engrossing film directed by Ridley Scott. It stars Matt Damon as an astronaut who is finds himself alone on Mars after a storm forces the rest of his crew to evacuate. While scientists work tirelessly on earth to bring him home, Watney uses his ingenuity and limited resources to survive by fixing equipment, growing food. Described by Barack Obama as one of the best science fiction films he had ever watched, it’s a wonderful story of resilience, science, and human determination against overwhelming odds, and at 2hrs 30minutes long, it’ll (nearly) immerse you in space for ten times longer than Blue Origin’s much fêted all women crew!
Read last month’s opinion piece on the importance of this space trip for women – or otherwise in
Girl Power goes interstellar – or does it?
