Sunward Sky - Henry Neilsen

Nobody wants to go to space...

Humanity's diaspora to the stars never happened.

Space travel is too fraught with danger. It degenerates the muscles and bones of spacefarers to the point where life on the surface becomes unbearable. They call it "space palsy".

As a result, space work is now the purview of the forgotten, the desperate and the downtrodden. Those with nowhere to go.. but up, out of the gravity well. Once they're there, they're stuck, in terrible conditions and unable to survive on the surface.

A desperate hope...

Alyssa, a postgraduate researcher, has signed up aboard the Sunward Sky, a tired spacecraft operating years beyond its service life. The ship repairs and maintains the network of GPS and communications satellites that keep the world operating.

She's boarded with an experiment to run. Something that can help the crew, and maybe help humanity escape the dying Earth.

But she's not the only one with an agenda.