For eight years, we here at Take Back the Sky lobbied SpaceX to name their first Crew Dragon spacecraft after Serenity. While our campaign ultimately wasn’t successful, the process was a labor of love for all involved, not only because we believed in private spaceflight and the exploration of space by the people, for the people, but also because we are all fans of Firefly and Serenity, the space-western TV series and motion picture that are the creations of Hollywood writer, director and producer Joss Whedon. Joss Whedon at the premiere of 20th Century FOX’s “Bad Times At The El Royale” on Sep ..read more

Mankind’s journey out into the black has been goaded on by many great thinkers: some, storytellers who craft amazing and fantastical worlds of science-fiction that we yearn to attain, while others are visionary scientists who challenge us with ambitious plans of how that might be achieved (while some, like Robert Heinlein, dabble in both). I’d like to change tack today and look at the latter category. Over twenty years ago, Robert Zubrin wrote The Case for Mars, the book that inspired me as a young man (and many others, I’m sure) to grow up to study and become an engineer. It’s remained a bes ..read more

COMMANDER HARKEN:  “Seems odd you’d name your ship after a battle you were on the wrong side of.” MALCOLM REYNOLDS:  “May have been the losing side.  Still not convinced it was the wrong one.” — Firefly, “Bushwhacked” (2002) The event that we here at Take Back the Sky and many others in the aerospace community had been eagerly anticipating for close to a decade has finally came to pass.  At 3:22pm EDT on May 30, 2020, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida and carried NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to t ..read more

Even with the COVID-19 pandemic dominating the news these days, excitement and buzz continue to mount for the crewed demonstration flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon (DM-2), which is scheduled to launch on May 27 at 4:33pm EDT (2033 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and carry NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station. Since 2012, we here at Take Back the Sky have been lobbying for SpaceX to name this Crew Dragon after Serenity, the fictional Firefly-class transport ship in Joss Whedon’s science-fiction television ser ..read more

With all the focus on the much-anticipated launch of the Demo-2 mission of Crew Dragon on May 27, which will be the first time since the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011 that American astronauts will head out to the black from American soil, it’s easy to forget that SpaceX is still expected to launch another batch of approximately 60 satellites for the company’s Starlink broadband network first.  A Falcon 9 will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida NET Sunday, May 17 with a one-hour launch window opening at 3:53am EDT (7:53 ..read more

Crew Dragon at the Cape undergoing final preparations ahead of first flight to the @Space_Station with @NASA astronauts onboard pic.twitter.com/uMpmroFDD6 — SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 1, 2020 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. The flight, desi ..read more

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 th ..read more

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 ..read more

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 Falc ..read more

image: commons.wikimedia.org 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, b ..read more