Orbital High

Space for the rest of us.

Issue 01 — 2027

A trimestrial digital magazine about the private, intimate interior of life in space. Cannabis, ambient music, contemplative games, cozy reading nooks by the viewport — and the flawed, fun humans who will actually live up there.

Every Issue

Eight sections. One cocooning read. Swipe through like a magazine, scroll like a book.

🌎

Space Colonies

Slice-of-life stories from plausible orbital habitats. Bars, gardens, black markets, and morning coffee with a rotating starfield.

🚀

Space Transportation

The Matagami electromagnetic cannon: a real project to send a kiloton of cargo to orbit daily. Quebec-built, physics-checked.

🌿

Cannabis

Growing, cooking, and legalizing it in recirculated-air environments. Edible recipes included.

🌱

Space Nature

Plants, moss, and duckweed that belong in any colony. Humans are nature's way of reaching space.

🔬

Maths & Physics

One deep concept per issue, Quanta-style. Mind-blown guaranteed, gatekeeping not included.

🎧

Ambient Music

Albums for off-time. Slow, patient, atmospheric. Sound for staring out the observation deck.

🎮

Video Games

Relaxing, artistic, narrative. Reviews of games that reward patience and curiosity, not reflexes.

🎥

Movies

Films that leave you thinking about the universe. Sci-fi, contemplative, positive. Old and new, famous and forgotten.

Person playing a handheld game in a space station sleeping pod

About

Orbital space is currently only accessible to astronauts — model members of society. There are no gamblers, rock stars, or stoners up there. No parties, no bars, no lazy Sundays.

With the eventuality of space colonies, all of that will exist. Orbital High lives in the bedroom-soul universe: the reading nook by the viewport, the grow room tended before sleep, the ambient album filling a small cabin. Everyday situations in extraordinary places, for regular people who dream big but also like to sit still.

The magazine is built on a foundation of plausibility. The Matagami space cannon is a costed, Quebec-based engineering project that makes low-cost cargo-to-orbit realistic. Everything in the magazine flows from that premise.

Format

Digital magazine, trimestrial. Built on kos/Godot. Swipeable sections, scrollable text.

First Issue

2027

For Readers Who Are

  • Cozy technologists & indie makers
  • Scientifically literate dreamers
  • Quebec & Canadian builders
  • Cannabis users with taste
  • Artistic-adjacent, narrative-minded

Contact

info@orbitalhigh.com

Cannabis grow room inside a space station module

Issue 01 Preview

Groundwork. The first issue establishes the voice and introduces the spine.

The Cannon of Ada

A 20 km electromagnetic accelerator north of Matagami, Quebec. 100-ton cargo pods, 10 launches per day, one kiloton to orbit daily. The project that makes everything else plausible.

Station Ada

An O'Neill-style rotating habitat built with cannon-delivered materials. Coffee in the galley, a shift in the grow-room, ambient music and edibles with friends before sleep.

Kauffman Networks

Random Boolean networks and the origin of life. If life self-organizes from sufficient chemical complexity, seeding a closed ecology on a station is a network problem, not a miracle.

Ambient Picks

Ólafur Arnalds — Some Kind of Peace. Christian Löffler — Lys. Carbon Based Lifeforms — World of Sleepers.

Games

Kingdom: Two Crowns and Deliver Us The Moon. Cozy strategy and lonely lunar exploration.

Movies

Universe (1960), Another Earth (2011), The Legend of Ochi (2025). Contemplative, curious, warm.

Cat perched beside a viewport on a space station

Cats in space? Yes please!