I was flipping channels the other day and The Martian was playing. It reminded me of this piece, which I wrote back in 2013, the year before the mass market publication of Andy Weir’s book and two years before the movie was released.

Imagine you are an astronaut on a mission to some newly discovered planetary paradise. Early on in your voyage there is a mechanical failure on your spacecraft and you are marooned, alone, on a barren, lifeless moon. Your capsule is well equipped, so you have air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat – enough to allow you to live out the rest of your natural days. You will survive.

Years of this monotonous, hopless survival go by. Then one day your radio crackles and flashes. Good news! A spacecraft is on its way to rescue you and take you the rest of the way to your mission objective. All you have to do is wait until the right moment and then launch yourself to rendezvous with it as it passes by. Of course, there’s a catch: this maneuver will require using most of your air supply as propellant and leaving behind all but a day’s supply food and water. You’ll only have one shot, and if you’re a tiny bit too early or a smidgen too late or just a hair off target … well, anything is better than spending the next few decades alone on some rock, right?

You’re filled with hope and excitement for the first time in ages. All day, every day you talk to the spacecraft as it approaches. You talk about everything, about your childhoods and your families and all of your favorite things. You talk about how you spend your days, what you’re thinking, what flavor of food goo you’re eating, what the stars look like where you are. And you talk to the spacecraft about the future, about all of the things you’re going to do when you get to your new planet, things you’re going to do together.

A few years go by (remember, we’re talking about traveling great distances here) with you falling asleep and waking up with the radio in your hand. You and the spacecraft talk less and less about the past now, and not much changes from day to day for either of you. Mostly, you talk about your new life together, and as reality starts sharpening the edges of that softly blurred and comfortable fantasy your launch date moves closer and closer with alacrity.

You don’t sleep as well as you used to. You doze off to dreams of a joyous rendezvous and the blissful time beyond but are jerked awake by thoughts poking you like a broken spring in your mattress (which is probably a slab of some space-age foam material that contains neither springs nor convenient metaphors).

What if the spacecraft isn’t where it’s supposed to be?

What if you reach the spacecraft and the docking just doesn’t work?

What if your destination is as lifeless and barren as where you are now?

What if the spacecraft is lying?

What if the spacecraft isn’t real and you’ve just been talking to yourself every day?

What if … ?

Then one day you’re staring at your monochrome landscape with its garden of uninteresting rocks and lawn of dull dust and you catch yourself thinking about how beautiful it is and at that moment you realize the proportion of doubt to hope has shifted. You need to radio the spacecraft and work out a new checklist of procedures and safeguards and contingency plans and –

It’s time. The vectors and velocity and trajectories and coefficients have all come together and the alarms are piercing your ears and lancing your eyes and punching your heart. You race to your escape pod and strap yourself in. You’ve rehearsed it in your head a zillion times but instead of the whoosh of acceleration that should be squeezing you into your seat you feel instead the motherly hugs of inertia. Your hand hovers over that big red button and you watch your window of opportunity narrow to a tiny slit. Now is your last chance.

Now.

NOW.

NOW.

Don’t feel bad. There’s a peace that comes with it eventually, and sometimes – when the light of whatever star that is hits the dirt in the sky at just the right angle – the sunsets are actually quite nice.