Orbital

In Orbital, isolation is both physical and psychological, shaping how the astronauts interact with one another and with the world they have left behind. The space station is a closed system, where six individuals must function as a team while also serving as one another’s only source of social interaction. Though the astronauts maintain contact with Earth, the nature of this communication is limited. Calls are brief, messages arrive with delays, and their relationships…

Time in Orbital is not just distorted; it is nearly meaningless. The station orbits Earth 16 times a day, causing sunrises and sunsets to occur at intervals too short to structure daily life. Without the natural cycles of night and day, the crew loses their innate sense of time. Roman marks the passage of days through arbitrary milestones—counting sunrises, clothing changes, and exercise routines—but these markers only reinforce the artificiality of his schedule. Similarly, Nell…

In Orbital, Earth appears small and fragile, a single planet moving through an indifferent universe. From space, its ecosystems seem self-contained, vast, and resilient, yet the astronauts see undeniable evidence of human impact. Wildfires carve through forests, coastlines erode, and the atmosphere bears visible scars of pollution. The planet they observe is not untouched; it is shaped by human actions in unignorable ways. The astronauts are keenly aware that human activity has altered the…

Throughout Orbital, nature repeatedly fails to acknowledge the presence of humans. From space, the crew watches storms form, oceans move, and auroras spread across the atmosphere, all without human intervention. These forces existed long before people did and will continue long after they are gone. The astronauts see Earth as a system operating independently of human concerns, where natural events occur on a scale beyond human influence. The typhoon that develops during their mission…