Status Updates From Orbital

So beautiful but sooooooo boring

‘So strenuously unrobotic is the astronaut’s heart that it leaves the earth’s atmosphere and it presses out—gravity stops pressing in and the counterweight of the heart starts pressing out, as if suddenly aware it is part of an animal, alive and feeling. An animal that does not just bear witness, but loves what it witnesses.’

‘What are you anyway as an astronaut but a conduit—you are selected for your non-stick temperament, maybe one day a robot could do your job and maybe it will; you have to wonder. […] But what would it be to cast out into space creations that had no eyes to see it and no heart to fear or exult in it?’

‘[…] they don’t come into space to be encouraged. 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. And what they find is that they are small, no, nothing.’