Ready for liftoff

Here's how to watch Texans make history with the NASA/SpaceX mission launch

Houston-area NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will make a historic flight.

Photo courtesy of NASA

UPDATE: With just minutes to go before launch, the Crew Dragon mission was scrubbed due to weather concerns. The next flight attempt will be 2:22 pm Saturday, May 30, according to NASA.

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Two NASA astronauts are set to make history on a space mission with many Texas connections.

Astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley — who hail from the Houston area — will blast off on Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, a Falcon 9 rocket, at 3:33 pm (CST) Wednesday, May 27, from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The flight is currently scheduled as a 60-percent “go” for launch as of May 27, with only inclement weather or a technical issue holding up the takeoff.

The mission will carry the duo to the International Space Station and is considered a new era of human spaceflight, as it's the first time American astronauts will launch on an American rocket from American soil to low-Earth orbit since the conclusion of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.

The mission is the first launch with astronauts of the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. It’s the final flight test for SpaceX; the mission will validate the company’s crew transportation system, including the launch pad, rocket, spacecraft, and operational capabilities.

The road to success for SpaceX runs through the small Central Texas town of McGregor, as the Waco Tribune-Heraldreports. McGregor, a Waco suburb with a population of 5,200, is home to a SpaceX facility that employs about 500 workers and tests engines and other components before every launch. When the rocket boosters are recovered from the Atlantic Ocean, they are transported to McGregor for refurbishment.

Getting the spacecraft and astronauts safely home will boost the fortunes of the Waco-area aerospace industry and the SpaceX plant in general, Andrew Smith, executive director of the McGregor Economic Development Corp., told the newspaper.

The pairing of NASA — a governmental agency — and SpaceX, a commercial space flight operation, means NASA could save tens of millions in flight costs and instead focus on its Artemis mission to the moon, for example.

“The ultimate goal for us as astronauts and test pilots is just to go up there and prove out the mission and to bring the vehicle home safely,” Hurley told CultureMap news partner, ABC13.

The mission also will be the first time NASA astronauts will test the spacecraft systems in orbit — Behnken and Hurley will don new, specially designed spacesuits and use touchscreen computers systems.

Due to COVID-19 and subsequent social distancing issue, the launch will see only a small crowd at the Cape Canaveral takeoff.

But the whole world can watch via live feeds on social media channels.

Viewers can watch NASA’s coverage beginning at 11:15 am May 27 and running through the Crew Dragon’s docking at the International Space Station on May 28.

As part of the pre-launch ceremonies, at 12:07 pm, Burleson native Kelly Clarkson will sing the National Anthem. Launch and pre-launch activities can be watched on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and even LinkedIn.

A special called Space Launch Live: America Returns to Space airs at 1 pm on the Discovery and Science Channel and will feature special celebrity guests including singer Katy Perry, Adam Savage, former NASA engineer and YouTube star Mark Robert, and astronaut Chris Cassidy from the International Space Station.

For those watching at home and looking for a festive theme, Space Center Houston created an at-home viewing guid e, including a playlist, outfits, and space food.

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Movie Review

Music and Lady Gaga make for unusual Joker: Folie à Deux film sequel

Photo by Niko Tavernise

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie à Deux.

For a movie that was more about one man’s mental health condition than anything related to comic books, 2019’s Joker was shockingly successful, making over $1 billion worldwide and nabbing a Best Actor Oscar for Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix and writer/director Todd Phillips are back with Joker: Folie à Deux(literally meaning "a madness of two"), a film that has some of the same themes but a story that could not feel more different.

After his murder spree in the first film, Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) now calls Arkham Asylum home, where he is alternately tortured and favored by the guards, and revered by his fellow patients. Arthur plays nice for the most part, which leads one of the guards, Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson), to allow him to attend a music class in the minimum security ward of the facility, where he meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga).

The immediate connection between Arthur and Lee allows Arthur to indulge in more than a few fantasies, ones that manifest themselves in the film as musical sequences involving the two of them. As his fortunes change and he is forced to stand trial for his crimes, Arthur returns to the fantasies repeatedly, with Lee giving him a sense of hope and security that has been missing from his life.

The film, co-written by Scott Silver, features songs so often that the boundary between reality and fiction within the story is completely blurred. Some of the songs show Arthur, Lee, or both singing at Arkham, while others emulate old musicals by creating numbers on a set meant to look like the Murray Franklin talk show from the first film. It’s fair to wonder how much, if any, of it is real or just things that Arthur has conjured to comfort himself.

Most of the songs - “Good Morning,” “Get Happy,” and “That’s Entertainment,” among others - are cribbed from the classic movie musical era of the 1930s-1960s. Their titles and lyrics have surface-level relevance to the story being told, but it’s hard to say their meaning goes deeper than that. They are also so chopped up and delivered so often that it’s difficult to tell what kind of importance Phillips was trying to put on any one individual song.

While the music is the obvious big change, the more significant one is the film’s almost total lack of action. The focus on Arthur and Lee’s possible relationship and Arthur spending most of the film at Arkham leads to very few scenes of mayhem. In fact, hardly anything of substance happens until the film’s final act, and what does happen is less impactful than what fans of the first film may want.

Phoenix, just as he did in Joker, commits fully to the role, appearing to become gaunt once again and making sure the character is sufficiently disturbing. The arc makes him quieter and less annoying this time around, which may or may not disappoint some viewers. Lady Gaga is fine as the character otherwise known as Harley Quinn, although it’s interesting that she was likely hired for her singing ability and the film rarely lets her truly let loose.

If the nihilistic tones of Joker made it a surprise billion-dollar movie, it would be even more of a shocker if Joker: Folie à Deux made anywhere near that type of money. The Joker character has been approached in many different ways, but this is one of the oddest yet.

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Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters on October 4.

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