9 Years Waiting to Launch

April 4, 2026

Credit: NASA

This week, Artemis 2 finally launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The mission to return humans in the vicinity of the Moon after half a century was a long time coming, because 9 years ago I released Liftoff, a movie about this very launch back in 2017.

Inspired by the constant delays of this mission (back then going by the much less interesting name of Exploration Mission 2, or EM-2 for short), Liftoff is the story of an inexperienced news reporter heading to Cape Canaveral to cover the launch of the rocket. Once there, she meets all the other reporters that have been covering launches for ages, and finding out why this is such a big deal.

Concept art for the main character, Carrie. Named after Carrie Fisher, who had recently passed away at the time.

At the time, EM-2’s rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), was the biggest rocket ever made, and there was a lot of hype for it’s big debut. At the time this short film was being written, NASA had just solidified their plans of making this a Lunar flyby with four astronauts onboard. Nine years later, the mission is finally in progress as the four astronauts travel towards the Moon and back.

In this short film, NASA (in here called NASADA, after the fictional agency from Power Rangers in Space, because when I emailed NASA for permission to use their name, they said “No.”) has to do damage control as to why they keep delaying their rocket launch. Employing the services of a space educator named “Bill” (basically Bill Nye, the Science Guy), he explains the mission in increasingly farcical ways.

I tried my best to make this short film as scientifically accurate in regards to the science, the EM-2 mission, and the job of a spaceflight reporter. I had a ton of help from real-life space reporter Sawyer Rosenstein, who still covers NASA launches to this day, including Artemis 2. His recording of a real life Falcon 9 rocket launch is what you hear at the climax of the story when the SLS finally liftoffs into outer space.

The movie was completed at the end of 2017, and debuted at film festivals in 2018, winning awards like the 2018 Kids Favorite at the Tally Shorts Film Festival. I’m proud of this movie, as it mixed many of my own personal interests into one. I think it’s just crazy it took 9 years for the events that the movie portrayed to happen in real life.