Williams faced the brilliant, untethered magnitude of our universe.

From In Pursuit of Silence by George Prochnik. Page 9.

I got it into my head that it was vital I speak with an astronaut. Astronauts, I imagined, were exposed to the most spectacular juxtaposition of noise and silence conceivable. What could be louder than a rocket launch? And what could be quieter than the depths of space? It seemed to me that the contrast between these two experiences, appearing as it did in so short a span of time, would give astronauts a unique insight into the essence of silence.

After weeks of back and forth with Houston, I got the welcome news that astronaut Suni Williams would grant me a fifteen-minute interview. I read her NASA biography. She had logged more than 2,770 hours in space on 30 different aircraft, and had clocked a spacewalking world record. In addition to serving on helicopter combat squadrons and U.S. Navy diving details, and helping to develop the International Space Station Robotic Arm, she listed her hobbies as including “running, swimming, biking, triathlons, windsurfing, snowboarding and bow hunting.” Whatever Williams said about anything was not to be taken lightly.

Quickly and unassumingly Williams shot down 90 percent of my suppositions. The noise of takeoff these days was nothing really to speak of—hardly louder than what you’d hear being on an airplane. In fact, for years NASA had been involved in some of the most advanced noise-abatement work on the planet, and the sleeping area of the space station was now one of the quietest places you could ever hope to find. Ventilation systems had been redesigned. New kinds of formfitting earplugs had been perfected. “Tonal measures” had been built into the walls and doors.

Just as the launch wasn’t all that loud, Williams explained, walking in space wasn’t all that quiet. Ground control was in constant contact—“and when you have people from the ground telling you ‘do this, don’t do that’ all the time, you don’t feel the silence of space so much."

Of course, I thought, the sound from their support team on Earth was pumped directly into the astronauts’ ears, making sure they weren’t drifting away or otherwise deviating from the mission assigned them. I felt embarrassed at my ignorance and ready to truncate our interview. But then, after a short pause, Williams began to speak again.

“Reflecting back, there was one time I remember feeling quiet in space. We were out on a spacewalk and were asked to wait for the night pass to go through.” (The night pass is the forty-five minutes of its ninety-minute orbit when the spacecraft is on the dark side of the planet.) While they were waiting, the chatter from Houston died down, then cut out altogether. “So we were just hanging out there, quiet, just hearing ourselves breathe out there at the end of the station,” Williams continued. “And it was like putting on a pair of glasses … Everything, all at once so clear, like after a wonderful rainstorm … You could see the stars really bright. You could see the depth of space."

In that brief spell of silence, Williams faced the brilliant, untethered magnitude of our universe.