Fact and Fiction

The European robotic arm controlled by cosmonaut Anna Kikina
surveys the Soyuz MS-22 crew ship after the detection of a leak
that cancelled Wednesday’s spacewalk. Image credit: NASA TV

I've sometimes wondered how close my writing about Mars exploration approximates real life, seeing as how much of it stems from a close reading of current advances and research. Today I noticed an event on the ISS of which a scene in Building Mars could be a prescient echo. Compare:

this recent story on the ISS

"The crew of the International Space Station on Sunday was inspecting an attached Russian space capsule that may have been damaged by a micrometeorite, while ground controllers considered whether to send up a replacement spaceship to ferry some of them home."

...with this extract from Building Mars, in which the final crew of the ISS before its fiery decommissioning discover a leak in their return capsule (but in this, it was the Starliner which had the hole, not the Soyuz):

'Cosmonauts' - extract from Building Mars

Currently I'm writing the future history of imaginary Mars settlements in about the year 2055. I doubt that very many of the corporate, economic and political shapes of things to come will resemble my story, but perhaps I have anticipated some of the challenges the real marstronauts will face. After all, I get most of my ideas from the leading researchers and engineers who are working deep in the darkened mines of space exploration.

An artistic rendering of Boeing’s Starliner docking with the International Space Station. Image credit: NASA