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Orbital Sunrise: The First Art Made in Space

2021-11-16 · story · John · 10:56 · watch on YouTube

Topic: History & curiosities (also: Pop culture, Science & nature) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion

Formerly titled See What You'll Never See: The Orbital Sunrise.

John tells how cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, after nearly dying on the first spacewalk in 1965, calmed himself by drawing the orbital sunrise, the first art made in space, and argues that art is a window into worlds we will never see and a landing site when we do not know where else to go.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Dürer's rhinoceros: imagination fills unknowns with human guesses

  • ★★ Recalling a passage from You Are an Artist, John says Dürer's 1515 rhinoceros etching shows plates of armor with rivets; Dürer had never seen a rhinoceros, only a description and a small sketch. — 00:00:00 · You Are an Artist
  • ★★★ Where Dürer's rhinoceros differs from a real one, John says, it betrays that humans fill unknowns with guesses shaped by their humanness: told of armor-like skin, Dürer imagined 16th-century human armor. — 00:00:29

00:00:56 — Art as a bridge to the unimaginable; orbital sunrises and astronauts' orbital perspective

  • ★★ It is hard to think about what we cannot imagine, John says, but perhaps art is one way to bridge that divide. (hedged) — 00:00:56
  • ★★ The International Space Station orbits Earth every 90 minutes, and with each orbit the sun rises from behind the Earth, darkness giving way to an arc of blue light and then more colors. — 00:00:56 · Earth
  • ★ Victor Glover (quoted): American astronaut Victor Glover wrote that the bands of color of the orbital sunrise remind him of Psalm 30: weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. — 00:01:25
  • ★★ Many space travelers have written of the so-called orbital perspective: seeing the whole interconnected planet from afar, teeming with life, vast and resilient, fragile and tiny. — 00:01:49 · Earth
  • ★ Mae Jemison (quoted): Astronaut Mae Jemison said that in space she feels more expansive and very connected to the universe. — 00:01:49

00:02:12 — Leonov's Voskhod 2 spacewalk, the near-fatal re-entry and the first art made in space

  • ★★★ Leonov is remembered today for the first spacewalk, but he also made the first space art. — 00:02:12
  • ★★ In March 1965, aged 30, Leonov flew with his friend Pasha Belyayev in a spherical craft just over two meters wide; allowed few belongings, he brought a drawing pad and colored pencils. — 00:02:12
  • ★★ Leonov loved making art from childhood and wanted to go to art school, but it was too expensive, so he became a pilot. — 00:02:53
  • ★★ The mission, Voskhod 2 (voskhod means sunrise in Russian), lasted just over a day yet had many firsts: the first spacewalk, the first space art, and the first landing 1,500 miles off course. — 00:02:53
  • ★★ After the spacewalk, broadcast live, Leonov's suit had ballooned in the vacuum so he could not enter the airlock; he had to let oxygen out of his suit to inch inside. — 00:03:53
  • ★★ When the mission was in jeopardy, transmissions stopped and state radio played Mozart's Requiem, the Soviet custom after a senior figure died but before the death was announced. — 00:04:32
  • ★★★ Back inside, unable to sleep or write a report, Leonov calmed himself by sketching his first impressions of the panorama he had seen in space with colored pencils. — 00:05:43
  • ★★★ John finds the simple sketch stunningly beautiful and telling: the first art made outside Earth's atmosphere depicts that atmosphere; Leonov drew not stars or himself but home, the one world Mary Oliver said we all belong to. — 00:06:33 · Earth

00:07:01 — John will never see an orbital sunrise; art as a window into other worlds

  • ★★ John will never see an orbital sunrise: an inner ear disorder has damaged his sense of balance, and he is not a pilot, an engineer or a billionaire. — 00:07:01
  • ★★ John sides with Eudora Welty, who said a sheltered life can be a daring life since serious daring starts from within; his daring, he adds, also generally ends within. (playful) — 00:07:26
  • ★★★ Like Dürer with the rhinoceros, John depends on others' words and images for orbital sunrises; that is one gift of art: a window, not fully transparent, into other worlds and lives. — 00:07:26

00:08:07 — The uncontrolled descent, landing in the Siberian wilderness and rescue

  • ★★ After the airlock was ejected the craft spun wildly; the automatic guidance failed, and Leonov chose a landing site 1,500 miles west in wilderness so a crash would not kill anyone on the ground. — 00:08:33
  • ★★ They landed in a forest in two feet of snow, the hatch blocked by a fallen tree; freeing it took hours, and they spent a very cold night in the Siberian wilderness before rescuers came. — 00:09:10

00:09:50 — Art as a landing site in the wilderness; sign-off

  • ★★★ John looks at Leonov's drawing when exhausted by despair or pressed by longing and fear; for him art is a kind of landing site in the wilderness, where he goes when he does not know where else to go. — 00:10:00

    “art is a kind of landing-site in the wilderness”

  • ★★★ Through art the paradoxes of consciousness resolve for John: he sees what he will never see, knows what he will never know, and through Leonov feels the wonder of an orbital sunrise. — 00:10:27

In the description and comments

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Alexei Leonov · Alexei Leonov's spacewalk drawing · Dürer's Rhinoceros · Earth · Voskhod 2

Also: People: Albrecht Dürer · Eudora Welty · Mae Jemison · Mary Oliver · Pavel Belyayev · Victor Glover

Works: Psalm 30 · Requiem (Mozart) · You Are an Artist

Concepts: equilibrioception · overview effect

Places: International Space Station · Siberia · Soviet Union

Only in the description or credits: Sarah Urist Green · Seán Doran · The Anthropocene Reviewed (book) · The Anthropocene Reviewed (podcast)

Also centred on Alexei Leonov's spacewalk drawing: Project for Awesome 2026 part 3!

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