by Jeff Cunningham
NASA has scheduled the first crewed launch of SpaceX’s independently designed and developed Dragon spacecraft for 4:32 p.m. EDT (2032 GMT) on May 27, 2020 (barring unforeseen delays, such as a high probability of adverse weather). Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be the first American astronauts to go into space aboard an American-made ship since the former Space Shuttle program. Continue Reading
by Chris Tobias
SpaceX will launch its next batch of 60 Starlink satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket NET 3:16 PM EST (19:16 UTC) Thursday, April 23 from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Starlink mission patch (image courtesy thespacestore.com)
Starlink is SpaceX’s constellation of satellites that are designed to provide broadband internet access across the globe. This month’s launch will push the size of SpaceX’s Starlink fleet to just over 300 satellites, though not all of them will be operational when the broadband network goes online.
The Falcon 9 booster for this mission completed its static fire on April 17, nearly a full week before its scheduled launch. It is a bit unusual for SpaceX to conduct such an early static fire, which has led some to speculate that it might be related to the fact that the Falcon 9 used for the company’s most recent mission on March 18 suffered an engine failure that ultimately resulted in a second consecutive unsuccessful attempt at landing and recovering the first stage booster (though the mission itself was successful). The booster that was lost last month had just been launched for the fifth time, more than any other Falcon 9.
The rocket that will be used for this upcoming mission will be making its fourth flight, having previously launched in support of Crew Dragon’s first flight to the space station as well as the RADARSAT Constellation mission and the fourth Starlink mission. A problem-free launch and recovery would ease any troubled minds in advance of the launch of the crewed Demonstration Mission of Crew Dragon (DM-2), which is scheduled to occur late next month.
If there are those who are concerned, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine doesn’t seem to be among them. He has already stated that Falcon 9’s engine anomaly on March 18 is “… not going to impact our Commercial Crew launch.”
Big Damn Heroes Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley sit in the cockpit of the SpaceX Crew Dragon that will take them out to the black next month. (image courtesy SpaceX)
Despite Bridenstine’s assurances, SpaceX may be feeling a bit more pressure to prove the reliability of the Falcon 9’s Merlin engines given that the rocket is scheduled to send two NASA astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, out to the black on a test mission to help prove that Crew Dragon’s systems meet NASA’s requirements for certification to carry astronauts to the International Space Station and back. The mission will launch NET May 27 from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center, and will mark the first time since the conclusion of the Space Shuttle program in 2011 that American astronauts will launch from American soil.
It is our hope that when it does finally launch, that first Crew Dragon will be named Serenity, after the Firefly-class transport ship from Joss Whedon’s sci-fi television series Firefly and follow-up motion picture Serenity. For nearly eight years now, we at Take Back the Sky have been trying to convince SpaceX to christen the spaceship with that name, and if you’d like to take action to help us, there’s still time (though admittedly not much) to write to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk and president and COO Gwynne Shotwell to ask them to consider the name.
During this upcoming mission, SpaceX plans to recover the Falcon 9’s first stage for a fourth time in the Atlantic Ocean aboard its drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. The fairing for the mission is also a veteran of a previous launch, having been flown for the AMOS-17 mission in August 2019. SpaceX’s fairing recovery vessels, GO Ms. Tree and GO Ms. Chief, will attempt to recover the fairing yet again during this mission.
Those who wish to follow the launch live can tune in to SpaceX’s webcast of the mission approximately 20 minutes before liftoff at spacex.com and on the company’s YouTube channel.
Peace, love and rockets…
by Chris Tobias
If you are a fan of Joss Whedon who has been starved for more tales of the thrilling heroics of Captain Malcolm Reynolds and his crew, then the past few years have been a good time to be a Browncoat. Fans have seen a whole passel of print hit the shelves– initially in several volumes of Serenity comics and graphic novels published by Dark Horse Comics, and more recently in the form of Firefly prose novels and reference works published by Titan Books and Insight Editions as well as a new ongoing Firefly comics series (and its accompanying one-shot stories and graphic novels) published by Boom! Studios.
The ongoing Firefly comics series from Boom! Studios made its debut in November of 2018, and is set between the events of the Firefly TV series and the motion picture Serenity. It has introduced a number of interesting new characters and landed the crew in more than a few exciting situations in the 15 issues that have been published so far. Despite some minor shortcomings (like the fact that it took no less than 13 issues for any of the characters to utter even a single syllable of Chinese), for the most part the plots have been entertaining and have managed to maintain the spirit of Joss Whedon’s original stories and characters– even though the creator of the Firefly ‘verse has had very minimal personal involvement in the project. (Whedon is officially listed as a “story consultant” for the series.) The same can be said of Boom! Studios’ Firefly spin-off comics… with one notable exception.
Image: Amazon.com
In November of last year, Boom! Studios released Firefly: The Sting, an original graphic novel (OGN) written by New York Times bestselling writer Delilah S. Dawson, whose numerous writing credits include several books set in the Star Wars universe. (Dawson collaborated with no less than five different illustrators on this project, one for each of the book’s chapters, though it’s worth noting that the illustrators have similar pencilling styles and the book’s artwork is visually seamless from one chapter to the next.) The book was announced in June of 2019 with a solicitation that included the following synopsis (as reported on newsarama.com):
“Saffron and the women of Firefly pull the ultimate heist! Saffron– the enigmatic rogue who captured the hearts of Firefly fans worldwide– returns to Serenity. But this time, she’s got no time for Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, as she’s there to recruit the women of the ship to join her on a heist that has personal stakes for all involved.”
It’d be hard for any dyed-in-the-wool Browncoat not to be intrigued by a story involving Saffron, the criminal-minded opportunist played so deftly by Christina Hendricks in the Firefly episodes “Our Mrs. Reynolds” and “Trash.” But a heist for which she only recruits the women of Serenity? Sure, she and her “kinda husband” Malcolm Reynolds share a somewhat adversarial past, but if she’s desperate enough to include any members of Serenity’s crew in a scheme she’s conjuring (especially after her last attempt ended with Inara locking her in an automated trash bin), then what reason could she possibly have not to want a skilled pilot like Wash, or someone like Jayne who’d obviously be useful if things turned violent? And if things did go sideways and her gang ended up various degrees of bruised and bloodied, wouldn’t a man like Dr. Simon Tam be just the sort of person she’d want to have around?
This Browncoat was already skeptical, but I still ordered the book. After all, for the past ten years, no single pop culture brand has meant more to me than the Firefly/Serenity ‘verse. I have devoted countless hours to the Browncoats fandom, both as a local event coordinator for Can’t Stop the Serenity charity screenings and as co-founder of Take Back the Sky’s ongoing campaign to convince Elon Musk to name SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon space capsule after Serenity. I count myself among the most passionate of Browncoats who, nearly two decades after Firefly’s debut on Fox, will greet each new official story or officially licensed Firefly or Serenity product with enthusiasm. Besides, Boom! Studios’ Firefly books had a solid track record of good stories up to this point, and the writer was a best-selling author.
My copy arrived in time for me to take it along on a cross-country flight to the West Coast in mid-December 2019. Our family was headed to Southern California so my son could play lacrosse in the Legends National Cup, which afforded me the opportunity to read the OGN in one sitting on a nearly five-hour flight from Chicago to San Diego. I assumed that reading the story uninterrupted from cover to cover would allow me to appreciate the overall narrative better than if I read the chapters as installments. Ultimately though, I’m not sure it mattered, because from the very onset, this Firefly tale just felt… off.
by Chris Tobias
With Dragon D-1 snuggled safely against the International Space Station following its arrival on March 9, SpaceX will now turn its attention to the launch of its next batch of Starlink satellites from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center on March 15.
A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to liftoff NET Sunday morning at 9:22 am EDT (1322 GMT) at Cape Canaveral in Florida carrying another 60 satellites that will be installed in SpaceX’s growing constellation of Starlink broadband internet satellites. Tomorrow’s launch will be SpaceX’s sixth launch of the year and its sixth Starlink launch to date.
The Falcon 9 booster for this mission will become the first booster to launch five times. This particular rocket is a veteran of previous Iridium NEXT and Starlink launches, as well as the launch of Israel’s Beresheet lunar lander and Indonesia’s Nusantara Satu satellite.
SpaceX will attempt to recover the Falcon 9’s first stage for a fifth time in the Atlantic Ocean aboard its drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. The company also hopes to catch and recover the fairings from this mission aboard its “fairing catcher” ships, GO Ms. Tree and GO Ms. Chief.
Those who wish to watch the launch live can tune in to SpaceX’s webcast of the mission approximately 20 minutes before liftoff at spacex.com and on the company’s YouTube channel.
Peace, love and rockets…
Credit: Andy Luten
by Jeff Cunningham
Just before midnight on Friday night, SpaceX launched a Dragon cargo spacecraft towards the International Space Station. This launch marked several significant milestones in the democratization of space: Continue Reading
image: commons.wikimedia.org
by Chris Tobias
When a Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida in the waning minutes of March 6, it will mark not only the twentieth commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station, but also the final flight of SpaceX’s original, uncrewed Dragon capsule.
CRS-20 will be the final mission under the original Commercial Resupply Services contract that was signed with NASA in 2008, but the overwhelming success of the program has already led to a second contract, which will include not only SpaceX, but also Sierra Nevada and Northrop Grumman (formerly Orbital ATK).
Liftoff for CRS-20 is scheduled NET Friday, March 6 at 11:50 PM EST (Saturday, March 7, 4:50 UTC).
The Falcon 9 booster for this mission also flew the nineteenth commercial resupply mission to the ISS, and the Dragon capsule for this mission is a veteran of both the CRS-10 and CRS-16 resupply missions. SpaceX plans to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9 at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Dragon will deliver nearly three tons of supplies and science investigations to the ISS, and will eventually return with a similar cargo at the completion of its mission.
This will be the final mission of SpaceX’s “D1” version of Dragon (the original, uncrewed capsule that features prominently in Take Back the Sky’s logo). All subsequent missions will be flown with Crew Dragon, which will soon become the first US spaceship to launch from American soil with American astronauts aboard since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.
It is Crew Dragon that we hope Elon Musk and SpaceX will name after Serenity, the Firefly-class transport ship in Joss Whedon’s short-lived but much beloved science-fiction television series Firefly and critically acclaimed motion picture Serenity. With a crewed demonstration flight of Crew Dragon (DM-2) likely to happen no later than this summer, our campaign to lobby for the name is obviously in its endgame, so if you agree that the ship should have this name, please send a card or letter to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk and/or president and COO Gwynne Shotwell and tell them so ASAP.
And if you’d like to watch the final, historic flight of the OG Dragon, SpaceX’s webcast of the mission should go live approximately 20 minutes before launch at spacex.com and on the company’s YouTube channel.
Peace, love and rockets…
image credit: Spaceflight Now
by Chris Tobias
Astronomers may not be in love with the idea, but SpaceX plans to launch its fifth batch of Starlink satellites this Valentine’s weekend.
The latest Starlink mission is scheduled to lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force (Space Force?) Station in Florida NET Saturday morning, February 15. The launch window will open at 10:46 AM EST (15:46 UTC), and will remain open until 11:02 AM EST (16:02 UTC).
The Falcon 9 rocket for the mission will be making its fourth flight, and SpaceX plans to recover the first stage of the Block 5 Falcon 9 booster aboard its drone ship Of Course I Still Love You once again during this mission. The company’s fairing catcher ships will attempt to capture the fairings as well.
The weather forecast is currently 60% GO for launch. Should the launch be delayed, the weather is forecast to improve to 90% favorable for Sunday’s backup launch date.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk is working to create a space-based internet that will provide internet access to remote areas of the planet using satellites that beam signals down to Earth. The company already has 240 Starlink satellites in low-Earth orbit, and plans to launch 60 at a time until they number in the thousands.
Those who want to view the launch live can tune in to SpaceX’s webcast of the mission approximately 20 minutes before liftoff at spacex.com and on the company’s YouTube channel.
Peace, love and rockets…
“Take me out to the black, tell ’em I ain’t comin’ back…”
— Joss Whedon, The Ballad of Serenity
by Chris Tobias
On this date 53 years ago, a cabin fire during a launch rehearsal test at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station Launch Complex 34 killed all three Apollo 1 crew members– Command Pilot Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Senior Pilot Ed White II (the first American to walk in space), and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee.
The Apollo 1 tribute exhibit at Kennedy Space Center (NASA photo courtesy space.com)
In what can only be described as a cruel coincidence, the anniversaries of the other two most costly disasters in the history of the US space program both fall within a week of today’s. Tomorrow will mark the anniversary of the 1986 explosion during the launch of Space Shuttle Challenger that claimed the lives of her seven crew members– Commander Francis R. “Dick” Scobee, Pilot Michael J. Smith, Mission Specialists Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, and Judith Resnik, Payload Specialist Gregory Jarvis, and Payload Specialist and pioneer teacher in space Christa McAuliffe. This Saturday will mark the anniversary of the disintegration of Space Shuttle Columbia during reentry, which claimed the lives of her crew of seven– Commander Rick Husband, Pilot William C. McCool, Payload Commander Michael P. Anderson, and Mission Specialists Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel Clark and and Ilan Ramon (the first Israeli in space).
The names of these heroes are always worth repeating, and we at Take Back the Sky have written at length about these catastrophes over the past eight years. If you’d like to read any of our previous posts during this rough week of remembrance, you’ll find them if you conduct a simple search of our January and February archives of years past. If you’ve already read our previous articles, then might I suggest you observe this year’s anniversary by reading an NPR feature that was written on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 tragedy.
Though some of our younger readers may not have been born yet when these disasters occurred, those of us who were alive to experience the shock of hearing the news (or even seeing them live on television) will never forget where we were and what we were doing at the time. It would be easy to draw parallels to what many people experienced yesterday when they learned of the sudden and tragic deaths of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others in a helicopter crash in California.
However yesterday’s fatal crash, while equally tragic, will not lead to the grounding of all helicopter flights. The Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia accidents did cause the suspension, at least temporarily, of the nation’s space program, and they certainly ignited debates as to whether or not sending men and women to space was too risky an endeavor.
In a 1962 speech at Rice University, President John F. Kennedy famously said of the Apollo program, “We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” President Kennedy understood that it would be a rough road that would lead to the stars, but that traveling that road would bring out the very best that America has to offer on behalf of all humanity. The astronauts who perished on the launchpad in the Apollo 1 capsule and in space aboard Challenger and Columbia understood it too.
Image credit: arstechnica.com
It is encouraging that SpaceX and Boeing will soon send US astronauts into space once again in American spaceships launched from American soil as part of the Commercial Crew Program, and NASA recently announced ambitious plans to return to the Moon and eventually press on to Mars. To those who would still insist that sending astronauts out to the black is too risky or too expensive, I can only respond that the risk and the expense are not only an investment in the future of mankind, but also the only truly fitting way to honor the memory of the brave men and women of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia. It will be the crews of ships like Crew Dragon, Starliner and Orion that will carry on their legacy, and as long as we let them take back the sky, then the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia will not have died in vain.
Ad astra per aspera…
by Chris Tobias
Earlier today, SpaceX successfully conducted an in-flight abort test of Crew Dragon. In the words of NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, “… This critical test puts us on the cusp of once again launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil.”
The Falcon 9 disintegrates moments after the Crew Dragon was jettisoned from the booster during SpaceX’s January 19 in-flight abort test. (Photo: Reuters)
The test, which was to have been conducted on January 11 but was delayed due to weather concerns at the recovery site in the Atlantic Ocean, launched at 10:30AM EST and went off without a hitch. Crew Dragon separated from the Falcon 9 booster rocket, which was deliberately disintegrated in spectacular fashion while SpaceX’s new Mark 3 parachutes brought the capsule back to Earth like a downy feather to splash down in the Atlantic.
(Image: baaz.com)
This was one of the final tests that Crew Dragon had to pass before a crewed demo flight can be greenlit. It’s reasonable now to expect that just such a flight will occur before the end of this calendar year, which means we only have a few months remaining to convince Elon Musk, Gwynne Shotwell and the rest of the SpaceX brass that the first Crew Dragon to carry astronauts into the black should be named after Joss Whedon’s fictional transport ship Serenity from the movie of the same name and the Firefly television series that spawned it.
If you count yourself among the Browncoats of the ‘verse and you have not yet written a letter to SpaceX asking them to name the Crew Dragon Serenity, now is the time! If you’ve already written a letter, then you have our gratitude, but it honestly couldn’t hurt to write another one.
In the meantime, SpaceX isn’t slowing down one bit. Tomorrow, the company plans to launch a fourth constellation of approximately 60 satellites for its Starlink broadband network aboard another Falcon 9. The mission is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida NET 12:20PM EST. Unlike the Crew Dragon’s in-flight abort test, SpaceX will attempt to recover the Falcon 9’s first-stage booster for this Starlink mission on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Atlantic Ocean.
Those who have the day off from work for the MLK Day holiday and would like to watch the launch can tune in to SpaceX’s live webcast at spacex.com and on the company’s YouTube channel approximately 20 minutes before liftoff.
Peace, love and rockets…
by Chris Tobias
Here is how I’ll always remember hearing that the world had lost a superb writer, the greatest drummer in music history and an intelligent, inspiring human being who, by his own admission in the lyrics of the 2010 Rush song “Caravan,” could never stop thinking big…
I came home to an empty house Friday. My wife was still at work, and my son had stayed after school to work out with some of his teammates. I fed the cats, poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down to unwind from the work day. I was watching the second half of the English Premier League soccer match between West Ham United and Sheffield United when I heard the familiar line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail that is my text tone: “Message for you, sir!”
It was my brother Randy (whom some of you may have met at Take Back the Sky’s outreach tables at Pittsburgh sci-fi and comics conventions over the years). His message instantly ruined my weekend.
“My day had really sucked already, so I didn’t think it could get worse. But, in case you haven’t heard, Neil Peart died this morning from brain cancer.”
I suddenly felt that odd tingling sensation and emptiness that come with a real shock. I had hardly finished typing my response when his second text arrived.
“I read the news release. He actually died on Tuesday, but the family did not release the information until today. Even at the end, the man wanted his life, and death, to be kept private.”
Neil Peart (Image Credit: The Hollywood Gossip)
I doubt I have to tell you much about Neil Peart. A lot of people in the space community, and most self-professed geeks as well, have a high degree of reverence for the Canadian rock band Rush. Neil Peart, who joined the band in 1974, was regarded by many as the greatest modern rock-and-roll drummer, though he often infused Rush’s songs with elements of jazz, reggae and big band music as well. What really endeared him to lovers of science and science-fiction, however, were his lyrics. Peart took over the lyric-writing duties for the band starting with Rush’s second album, and his lyrics, as sung by the band’s bassist and lead vocalist Geddy Lee, immediately set Rush apart from the other rock groups of the day who only seemed to know how to sing about booze, women and decadent social rebellion. Over the years, Peart’s lyrics would draw inspiration from the writing of Ayn Rand and J.R.R. Tolkien as well as numerous works of science-fiction and philosophy, and it was this that made him a favorite of many fans of progressive rock, myself included.
Throughout his career with Rush, Peart often wrote about space and space travel. Some of the most well-known examples are “Cygnus X-1” from the 1977 album A Farewell to Kings, “Cygnus X-1: Book II” from the following year’s LP Hemispheres, and “Countdown,” the band’s tribute to the maiden launch of Space Shuttle Columbia, which appears on the 1982 album Signals.
