Dept. Of Speculation

15

Survival in space is a challenging endeavor. As the history of modern warfare suggests, people have generally proven themselves unable to live and work together peacefully over long periods of time. Especially in isolated or stressful situations, those living in close quarters often erupt into hostility.

Don’t cook, don’t fuck, what do you do? Don’t cook, don’t fuck, what do you do?

Einstein wondered if the moon would exist if we didn’t look at it.

Russian ground control had a traditional signoff for the cosmonauts: May nothing be left of you, neither down nor feather.

“What I’m looking for,” the almost astronaut tells me, “is interesting facts.”

Vladimir Komarov was the pilot on Soyuz 1, a spaceship that was plagued with technical problems from the start. In the weeks leading up to the launch, the cosmonaut became convinced that this would be a death mission, but the Russian politicians waved off the engineering reports. On the appointed day, a grim-faced Komarov was strapped into the spacecraft and launched into orbit. But almost immediately things began to go wrong. An antenna failed to rise. Then a solar panel malfunctioned, making the craft lopsided and difficult to navigate. Sensing a potential catastrophe, ground control aborted the mission and tried to guide Komarov home. But as he reentered the atmosphere, the spacecraft began spinning wildly. Komarov fought to control it, but it couldn’t be righted.

During the long terrible descent, a politician called Komarov to tell him he was a hero. Then his wife came on the line and the couple spoke of their affairs and said good-bye. The last thing anyone heard was the cosmonaut’s yells of rage and fear as his ship hurtled towards the ground. The capsule flattened instantly on impact, then burst into flames. There was no body to recover. Komarov’s widow was given his charred heel bone.

But long-term survival for astronauts in space environments poses other dangers as well. Some of the most daunting challenges may, in fact, be psychological. People studying such odds look to other kinds of isolation studies for clues. The logs of polar explorers may give us the best glimpse of what it might be like to stay in space for extended periods.

Aboard the Belgica, off Antarctica, May 20, 1898: Explorer Frederick Cook, trapped with his men on an icebound ship, wrote the following in his log:

We are as tired of each other’s company as we are of the cold monotony of the black night and of the unpalatable sameness of our food. Physically, mentally, and perhaps morally, then, we are depressed, and from my past experience … I know that this depression will increase.

“We’ll get through this,” I say to my husband. “We always do.” Slowly, he nods his head. I lie on the couch in the crook of his arm. Our clothes smell cooked.

We take turns taking her on trips. The other one stays home, sprays the house with poison again. Lice, she thinks they are. Neither my husband nor I can stand to keep secrets, but we keep this one, yes, we keep it. We learn not to wince when people worry aloud about getting them. We hardly ever go out and if we do we cook every bit of our clothing for hours so as not to chance giving them to anyone. Winter makes it harder. Before we leave the house, we must do the scarves and mittens, the boots and coats. When the timer goes off, we take all the clothes out of the cooker and then without sitting on the chair or the bed, get dressed and leave as fast as we can.

That year we get Christmas cards from his relatives, some with those family letters tucked inside. S got a promotion and is now a vice vice president of marketing. T has a new baby and has started an organizing business called “Sorted!” L & V have given up rice and sugar and bread.

My husband won’t let me write one. We send a smiling picture instead.

Dear Family and Friends,

It is the year of the bugs. It is the year of the pig. It is the year of losing money. It is the year of getting sick. It is the year of no book. It is the year of no music. It is the year of turning 5 and 39 and 37. It is the year of Wrong Living. That is how we will remember it if it ever passes.

With love and holiday wishes.

When we visit his parents, my daughter tries to learn to swim at the indoor pool. I watch her serious scrunched-up face, eyes closed, counting one stroke, two strokes. A few days later, she is up to fifty. Then my husband arrives from Brooklyn and she insists we rush him straight from the airport to the pool. But when we get there, she won’t do it. I am tight-lipped, resentful of all the fuss she has required to be made, the great anticlimax of it. My husband falls asleep in a deck chair as we are deliberating. He has been up all night, spraying poison. His mother, bright-eyed, gentles her through the water. “Once a swimmer, always a swimmer,” she says.

A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.