Bridge To The Moon: The Awesomeness Of Space

(In which Nothing Personal Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad, personally tells his great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, what it’s like to be in space.)

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: So what was it like to be in space, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: Oh, incredibly exciting - and the views were simply amazing! (In fact you could say they were literally out of this world - and I really do mean literally.) There was Earth, just below, all blue and white mainly, looking so beautiful, like nothing I’d ever seen before, slowly rotating. I had such a feeling of awe! From such an altitude you can see how it just hangs in the blackness: our home - a home to millions of species, not just ours - just hanging and turning slowly in the immense emptiness, cradling all its life, protecting it unknowingly from all the dangers of space - but sadly not able to do much to protect it from whatever damage we may do to it through our ignorance or negligence.

I gazed down and thought about everyone down there; and all the cities, towns, villages, buildings, infrastructure, institutions, cultures, nations; all the history of people that had happened in the view I could almost encompass without needing to turn my head; and all the plant and animal life; and all the countries I’d been to and hadn’t been to; all the wars that had been fought, all the turmoil that had happened there, and all the good things too: the progress of humanity, the progress from there into space, where I now was. And I could see a dark strip crossing the Earth - which was the bridge that the train I was in was crossing - trailing down towards our planet, getting skinnier and skinnier, until I couldn’t see it anymore - just the Earth, slowly rotating below. And I felt a great sense of belonging to that planet, and loving it, and feeling protective towards it, and everyone and everything on it.

Author: At this point Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad went into a reverie, which was fine by his great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter, because she had too. After a while Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad went on.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: I looked out into space - mostly on the Earth below, getting gradually further and further away. I found it rather comforting to look at. I suppose it was comforting to see that it was still there and still in one piece - somewhere I could get back to one day.

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter: Were you floating when you got to space, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad?

Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddad: No, Great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. There was only one region in space where we floated, and that was when we got fairly close to the Moon. There’s still gravity in space - the reason you see people floating in spacecraft sometimes, (apart from when they’re in a place where two celestial bodies’ gravity cancels out), is because they’re in orbit around a planet or some other body.

You see, a spacecraft in orbit is actually trying to move away from the body it’s orbiting and travel in a straight line, while the body it’s orbiting is trying to pull the spacecraft towards it. The spacecraft neither gets away, nor falls towards the body, because it has enough momentum to avoid falling, but not enough to get away. This orbiting situation has the same physical effect on the spacecraft, (and everyone and everything in it), as would be felt if the spacecraft were falling towards the body, but without ever reaching that body, and this falling effect seems like weightlessness - and looks like weightlessness too - to everyone onboard.

Next time:

Chapter Three Facilities On The Train

(or read the whole story here: https://vocal.media/fiction/bridge-to-the-moon)