Away From Earth -- A Story

The first thing you notice, of course, is the silence. The science books are quite clear on the reasons for this. It was one of the first things I remember learning about in our physics class, and I can still quote almost verbatim from that stuffy, dusty old textbook: "Sound is carried in the form of waves in any gas, solid or liquid. Noise creates a compression and rarefaction pattern which moves, through air, at around 730 miles per hour. The speed of propagation depends on several criteria, including the density and temperature of the medium". The speed of sound, we learned, unlike that of light, is not fixed. Acoustics is not an exact science. One thing is absolutely certain from all of this, however: sound does not travel in a vacuum. And at the moment (and for the foreseeable future), I am immersed, if that is the correct term, in the most complete vacuum known to man: I am in space.

It is about two hours since I left the airlock of Space Shuttle Endeavour, exiting into the vast, glaring white cargo bay, the doors open to the Earth like a pair of giant communicant's hands, awaiting the precious body and blood of Christ. On NASA mission STS-124, our main task is to put into orbit the second of the next generation of Space Telescopes, this one named, wonderfully so in my opinion, "Sagan"; after Carl Sagan, of course, who was always a hero of mine. It was largely Carl who inspired me to pursue my dream of becoming an astronaut in the first place; a career path which is difficult enough to follow in the USA, but in Britain was and still is considered downright foolhardy. Nevertheless, here I am, twenty years after setting my heart and mind on the goal, orbiting the Earth at a distance of 250 miles, creating for it one more infinitesimal satellite to add to the swiftly growing collection of communications satellites, space stations and debris which now surround our planet like a swarm of wasps.

I am currently passing over Africa or—to put it equally precisely, since Uncle Albert taught us that in space everything is relative—Africa is currently passing beneath me. I can see the lush greens of the west and central regions, transmuting almost imperceptibly into the dull orange-browns of the East. The horn of Africa points down like an upturned wizard's hat, bent at the tip. As I gaze down on the Eastern regions—Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya—I am now in direct line of sight with the very place where humanity began. In that small area on the surface of our azure sphere, several million years ago, a group of apes, probably finding their natural arboreal environment dwindling in the changing climate, gradually came to spend less and less time in the trees, and more time in the savannah, slowly changing their diets, from almost purely herbivorous, to omnivorous with a vengeance. For this small group of creatures, life became tougher. Forced to eat virtually anything they could find, they had to become canny and aware, predation being much more of a problem down on the ground than it had in the safety of the forest canopy. Gradually they developed a way of living together, sharing food and baby-sitting, from which developed communication skills and improved dexterity. Over evolutionary time, this small group expanded and became the dominant and most wide-ranging of the old-world apes, and thus began an evolutionary story which is familiar to most. A story which Ends, at least for today, with this small group of their far descendants floating 250 miles above the very spot where it all began, carried aloft on a giant burning fuel tank, then flung into orbit in a glorified glider.

Of course, Africa has now passed away and out of sight, and my perpendicular position with the planet is now the deep cyan of the Indian Ocean, the triangular subcontinent above, the myriad dots of Indonesia, Micronesia and Polynesia directly beneath me, and Australasia further down. It took Sir Francis Drake three years to circumnavigate the Earth—between 1577 and 1580 if my history serves me; we do it once every 45 minutes. It is difficult to say which is the more remarkable achievement.

As I mentioned, the first thing you notice out here is the silence. There is nothing on Earth, absolutely nothing, which prepares you for that. The second aspect to this experience is the isolation, not just of oneself, but of the entire Earth. In all directions other than Earthward, the blackness is more solid, more total and unyielding than anything ever experienced on the surface. Of course it is interspersed with a dizzying miasma of stars, hundreds of thousands visible from here, rather than the paltry two thousand to be seen in the night sky, and each of them burning with the steadiness and intensity of a laser. But the surroundings are predominantly black. The light of the sun, which is just emerging from the limb of the Earth, is not refracted as we have become accustomed to. When we look up into the daytime sky, the bright blue is simply sunlight being broken and spread out by the atmosphere, whereas in space, of course, this does not happen. When the sun becomes visible once more, and I slide my gold visor down the front of my helmet, it will show as an unbearably bright circle, with absolute blackness all around. Stark, white light. And yet it is that very star, its energy lethal in space, which has been the benefactor of all life on Earth. Its warmth coaxed organisms out of the primordial soup of the early Earth, nurtured those organisms, giving them precious energy, and provided the first link in the ever lengthening and complexyfying food chain. It has provided light for us to see our beautiful world, and to represent it in a million artistic depictions. It is not difficult to understand why all of the first human civilisations revered and deified the Sun. It was, and still is, the life-bringer.

There is an extraordinary peace in this unprecedented vantage point. A peace, and almost unbearable sorrow when looking down upon this most wonderful and wondrous jewel beneath me. To look at this planet, and then juxtapose the vision of awe with the knowledge of what we have done, and continue to do, to it. We have daily, for the last three hundred years, whether innocently or maliciously, worked towards the destruction of our world. Pollution and noxious emissions, beginning with the birth of the Industrial Revolution, and continuing even today—in our full knowledge of their consequences and despite the finely crafted rhetoric of politicians around the globe—threaten to choke and bake not only mankind but almost all other living organisms. We continue to destroy the equatorial rain forests at a rate that no bush fire, no pernicious disease, not even an encroaching ice-age could match. We are destroying the lungs of the planet, in the same way that billions of us still destroy our own lungs through smoking. Global emphysema, affects not only smokers, but every one of us.

I have to blink away a tear, and do my best not to let it be followed by others, since I cannot reach to wipe them away. And I need to be able to keep my vision clear for a while yet. My oxygen meter tells me I have about three hours’ worth remaining, and I intend to breathe every second of it.

I don't really know what happened. Somehow, my safety tether broke. As I began to ease away from the maternal bay doors of the shuttle, I could see the clasp still secured on the rail, floating dreamily as the momentum of the break was imparted into it. That clasp would, unchecked, move in the same way almost forever, with no friction to slow it. The realisation that I was now unconnected with any part of humanity, that my umbilical had become severed and I had been, effectively, born into the wider Universe, was, of course, initially petrifying. To see the serene white bird easing away from me, knowing that any kind of movement on my part would be totally ineffectual, was, for a while, so frightening and panic-inducing that my normally rational mind gave way completely to hysteria. I could vaguely hear voices in my headset, I think Charlie was telling me that they would manoeuvre the Shuttle using the Vernier jets and come and pick me up, but that might have been just my imagination. That is the proper procedure in such an emergency, but as yet there is no sign of it happening. Occasionally I catch a brief glimpse of Endeavour, just when the sun catches it. It is now a mere pinprick amongst a million others.

Yes, those first minutes were terrifying, mind-numbing. But gradually, as I have watched the Earth revolving beneath me on its invisible axis, my mind has reached an almost Zen-like sanguinity. If Endeavour reaches me and I am rescued, I would, of course, be overwhelmingly relieved. The thought of never seeing my family, never seeing anyone, again, is one I have pushed to the back of my mind. But if these are to be my final three hours in this world, then I cannot think of a better way of spending them. And so I will float around the Earth, as it floats beneath me, and pray to God, the sun, or whichever other Supreme Deity happens to be watching and listening to me at this moment, that they will in some way give my fellow humans the wisdom which they lack, and which I have briefly glimpsed, to finally understand that Earth is the most precious, important place in the Universe for mankind and for every other living creature upon it. It is, so far, the only life-bearing body we know of, and may even be the only one in the entire Universe. If everyone on it could spend just a few minutes orbiting in its gravitational thrall as I am now, maybe they would understand. Since that will not happen, I can only pray that this revelation comes to them in some other way. If this does not happen, then my last three hours in the Universe may bear witness to the last era of humankind. And now my vision has gone completely, and the tears will not be wiped away.