Sacrament

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Dear Susannah 

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I think we are all suffering from what Tanya calls the Peter Pan complex and by that I don't mean we l believe in Nature’s infinitesimals. Endeavour is our own private Neverland, populated by an unlikely collection of lost souls. Weightlessness, once you’re used to it, makes you feel as though you can fly; but you have to be careful not to get overconfident or lazy. We are all sporting cuts and bruises from mistimed leaps, from and flights from A to B. There is no comparable sensation. Not even floating underwater comes close (in a training tank or in open water there's still the mass of the water itself to contend with, as well as a pressure gradient which increases the deeper you go). The freedom of weightlessness is a compensation of sorts for the negative and potentially debilitating effects of microgravity. For the first time in my life I can truly fly.  

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Lunar space again, but on a far grander scale than anything our home world can boast. There is less and less chatter as we approach Saturn, the banter giving way to an almost reverential hush. We are approaching the high altar of the solar system’s cathedral and the sacrament of our long voyage, this endless communion with the dark, is almost at upon us. The sun is now no more than a bright star.

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I feel shut away in the dark, like a polar explorer confined to base camp during the long arctic night. That night will not begin to end until we loop round Saturn, borrowing a tiny fraction of her orbital momentum to sling-shot us back to Earth. For now, we must remain banished from the Sun’s warmth and light. Nothing brings home the distance we have come quite so dramatically as the sight of that Tiny Pale Dot, once so luminous in our skies, now all but shrunken to the size of any other star. I will never again take for granted the feel of sunlight on my skin or the radiance that lights the skies of Earth. Right now, even the dreary skies of an English mid-winter would be a welcome sight. This is the cold end of the solar system, very different from the fiery orbit of Mercury or the hot-house conditions on Venus.

 

I will be glad when we are gone from here and are falling sunward again. Back to the summer solstice, seas warmed by a tropical sun and living things that reach for the light. We are creatures of that star and, like any child separated from its parent, we long for its embrace.