Orbital Cloud by Taiyo Fujii

Author:Taiyo Fujii
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4215-9643-3
Publisher: VIZMedia
Published: 2017-03-20T16:00:00+00:00

2020-12-15T10:00 GMT

Project Wyvern

Today I had my first shower in three days. Incredibly, in this hotel we can even have hot showers. The Wyvern Orbital Hotel has been fitted up with thousands of unprecedented bells and whistles, but this is the one that I like best.

In free fall (is it okay to say “without gravity”?), water becomes a very strange sort of animal. If you let it out slowly, it gloms around the showerhead due to its surface tension. If you turn up the tap, droplets remain floating in the air. Anyone who entered such a room would drown.

Thankfully, the Project Wyvern engineers came up with a method to solve this problem. Introducing the “Showerpot”! Get inside a pot like a steel drum with your head sticking out and wash your body with the hot water that comes shooting out inside. Then, when it’s over, use pressurized air to blow away the water and a hairdryer to dry off. Finis.

After waiting three whole days, it was the greatest shower I’d ever had. I’m looking forward to using the “Shampoopot” tomorrow.

What I’m getting at here is that a stay on the Wyvern Orbital Hotel is very natural. Compared to the astronauts working away on other space stations, this is an environment of true luxury.

Yes, luxury indeed. I’m fully aware of the implications.

Take measures to combat global warming, or medicine, or agriculture, for instance. I wonder how many people in need could have been helped with the money used to bring me here. Even I had my doubts about the project when I heard that the Showerpot, whose sole purpose is to provide comfort during our stay, cost $200,000 to develop (wow, is that all?) and $450 each time we use it. In the end, though, my heart was swayed by Ronnie’s vision of spending time in space just as we normally do on Earth—of showing the world that this is possible—so I decided to set out on this trip with him, even though we hadn’t spoken in fifteen years.

Did the Apollo program prevent famine? Did a shuttle? Maybe not directly.

But the portrait of the Earth, Earthrise, that we imagine when we think about our planet was a photograph taken by Apollo 8 as they made their way to the moon. In the Cold War era, when we were at each other’s throats with nuclear weapons, that frail image of our home in the solar system floating in the blackness of space had the power to bring us all together.

Earthrise was taken by a soldier. The privilege of conveying the beauty of the Earth floating in emptiness was reserved for an astronaut who had taken many years of special training. If many more regular people came to see the Earth with their own eyes, then think how much easier it might be for us to consider the good of all.

Everyone, come to space!

I feel much better after writing this. Though I kind of regret giving the finger during that television broadcast.

Just when I

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