Lost in Space

We don’t bury our dead in space. On the rare occasions when the bodies of our deceased coworkers can be retrieved, we merely shove them back toward Earth and they burn up on reentry. But usually we never find them.

Why do the dead go missing? Blame physics.

The hazards of space work are many. Long-term exposure to cosmic rays and solar radiation invite cancer. Not every rocket launch is successful. And once in orbit, lots of things can go sideways, from leaky spacesuits to everyday industrial accidents (like slipping behind a thruster and getting burned to a crisp).

But the surest — and most common — way to shuffle off your mortal coil is to be perforated by a bit of flying space junk hurtling around the planet.

Doesn’t have to be big, and usually isn’t. My colleague Marty Jones was doing an EVA — that’s satellite-repair-guy-speak for Extra Vehicular Activity — when his faceplate met up with a half-inch piece of metal, origin, until now, unknown.

Ground controllers speculated it might have been a screw or other fragment from a disabled ANSAT-22D traveling at a relative velocity of 17,000 m.p.h. That’s 20 times faster than a pistol bullet.

But that was just a guess. There are more than 100 million chunks of space debris a half-inch or larger swirling in Earth orbit at terrifying velocities. The impact of the object that hit Marty — passing right through his helmet — sent him flying. Physics, right? It might have been tiny, but it packed a wallop.

Ground control tracked him briefly before his radar signature faded, and his trajectory suggested he had entered into a lopsided orbit that eventually would scrape the atmosphere’s upper reaches and drag him back to Earth in a fiery streak.

Not that I missed him. Truth is, Marty and I weren’t the best of friends. In fact, shortly before liftoff, we argued in a bar outside Titusville, one of the towns near Cape Canaveral.

On the surface, it was a stupid fight. A group of us satellite repairmen — and one repairwoman — were watching a British soccer match in the bar on — yes! — satellite television. Wrexham AFC was playing Grimsby Town and was up 1–0.

Marty, who hailed from Liverpool, was going on about how it was a disgrace that an American movie star — Ryan Reynolds — owned Wrexham, that the “damned Yanks” should stay on their own side of the pond, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I politely pointed out that we were literally sitting in a bar on the opposite side of the Atlantic from his hometown, and that his yammering sounded a bit hypocritical given that important fact, and, for crying out loud, Ryan Reynolds was Canadian.

“Just chill,” the satellite repairwoman, Michelle, told him.

“Yeah,” I echoed. “Listen to Michelle.”

He didn’t like that. “You know what, Everett?” he said. “You and I are going to be up there” — he pointed spaceward — “for three bloody months. If you know what’s good for you, you might want to shut your gob.”

“Meaning what?” I replied.

“Meaning be quiet.”

“No, I mean what’s a gob?”

“Bloody git.”

A gob, I later learned, is British slang for “mouth,” something I kinda-sorta figured out from the context of his rant.

I also learned he might have been a little irritable because he and Michelle had a thing, but, now, not so much. I discovered that later the very same evening from Michelle, herself, who told me she was afraid of Marty, that he was behaving erratically.

That did not boost my confidence in our mission. I had been willing to give Marty a pass — who among us hasn’t gotten drunk, yelled at his friends, and thrown a beer glass against the wall?— but Michele’s concerns left me anxious.

Marty wasn’t wrong about one thing, though: In 72 hours we were scheduled to launch, and we would be working in tandem for the next 90 days. We had better figure out how to get along.

Satellite repair is tough enough in the best of times. In addition to the aforementioned hazards, there’s also the stress of being confined in a very compact space vehicle for months on end, flitting from satellite to satellite, knowing every EVA could be your last. Doing that with someone you couldn’t stand? That was a recipe for disaster.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, then, that he bickered continuously. I was taking too long on my EVAs. I didn’t keep my tools in good order. And why was I texting Michelle?

On the day of his last EVA, Marty demanded to know if I had gone behind his back with her.

The guy was acting like child. I told him, “Grow up, dude.”

He wagged a gloved fist at me. “We’re going to settle this when I get back.” Then he stepped into the air lock.

The notion of spending another month locked in a tin can with this asshole had become increasingly unbearable. Now he sounded threatening.

I had read about firearms in space, whether a gun — say a 9mm Glock 19 — could be successfully fired in the microgravity and vacuum of orbit. Google it, yourself, if you like. There are nearly a billion results. The quick answer is: Yes.

There’s one catch — Newton’s Third Law of Motion. That’s the one about every action having an equal and opposite reaction. The practical upshot being that the recoil from the gun will push you backward even as the bullet flies out the barrel. Not a big deal on Earth. A potentially very big deal in the weightlessness of outer space.

I knew that. Which is why I braced myself on the side of our ship when I pulled the trigger.

In space, nobody can hear you scream. And a gunshot makes no sound.

What hit Marty in the face? Ground control wanted to know if I saw anything. The truthful answer was no. A bullet travels much too fast to see.

I had just murdered someone. A threatening jerk, sure, but still. It made me sick to my stomach. Then again, it seemed the perfect crime. Like I said, we don’t bury our dead in space. Which means we don’t perform autopsies, either. Marty would circle the Earth for a while and finally burn up. Just like all the other space garbage.

It was decided I would keep on with the repair mission. I assured the company I could handle it. There were only three more satellites on the list, all involving fuel cell replacements — jobs that required care, but were not overly complicated. And, honestly, it was a relief to have the solitude. With each passing day, Marty’s demise seemed more like a fading illusion, a bad dream, unreal.

I was on my last assignment. That was two hours ago. I was admiring how the shadow of my spacesuit painted the solar panels of the GSAT-43 when suddenly my shadow doubled in size.

I barely had a moment to turn sunward before the collision. A spacesuit with a shattered visor slammed into me and I was thrown free of the satellite, tumbling into the vast unknown.

We are now sharing a lopsided orbit together, Marty and me. Lost in space. I’ll run out of air long before reentry. But I figured I should get this off my chest.

If you receive this recording, know that I truly regret what I’ve done. I must have been out of my mind. Why did I even bring that gun aboard in the first place? It was like this was always going to happen. Was Marty really that annoying, or was I just making excuses, deceiving myself?

Was I the crazy one?

Regardless, the irony of my own demise is not lost on me. They say the universe runs on the fuel of karma. I’m living — and dying — proof of that.

Transmitting now.