Year: 2021

Categories
Deaths Doctor Who Franchises Matters of Life & Death

Jackie Lane, actress, dies

  • June 23, 2021

Jackie Lane as Dodo in Doctor WhoFormer actress Jackie Lane, who portrayed the first Doctor’s companion, Dodo Chaplet, in the third season of Doctor Who opposite William Hartnell, dies at the age of 79. One of the actresses originally considered for the role of Susan, the Doctor’s granddaughter, at the beginning the series, Ms. Lane wasn’t offered a role until the show entered its third season. The character of Dodo was rather abruptly introduced at the end of part four of The Massacre, and then is not seen again after the end of part 4 of The War Machines, presumably having decided to stay on Earth in her native time period, though the character’s fate is never specified; in real life, her contract was allowed to expire with no attempt made to keep her in the series. Burned by that experience, she retired from acting and became an agent, representing fellow Doctor Who stars Tom Baker and Janet Fielding during that phase of her career. Though she appeared in a handful of DVD bonus features covering her time on Doctor Who, she chose to stay out of the convention ecosystem, resisting offers to make public appearances.

Categories
Crewed Spaceflight SpaceShip Two

Virgin Galactic Unity-22

  • July 11, 2021

Virgin Galactic Unity-22Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity lifts off from Spaceport New Mexico on its first fully-crewed flight with passengers, including Virgin Galactic founder/owner Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic’s Beth Moses (who flew aboard a previous flight), Sirisha Bandla, and Colin Bennett, with veteran Virgin Galactic pilots David Mackay and Michael Masucci at the vehicle’s controls. The flight is suborbital only, but does earn the rookies among its crew their commercial astronaut wings. The flight was only announced at the beginning of July, where some observers interpreted the announcement as an attempt to upstage the previous announcement that Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin would be flying a fully crewed New Shepard capsule on July 20th. Independent flight of Unity lasts approximate 14 minutes, from drop/booster ignition from its carrier aircraft to landing (total time in both air and space for those aboard is approximately 58 minutes, from takeoff of the carrier aircraft to Unity‘s touchdown on the runway). (The flight system of carrier aircraft and air-dropped spacecraft was established almost exactly 17 years earlier in the first SpaceShipOne flight by Scaled Composites, which sold the design to Virgin Galactic for commercial development.)

Categories
Crewed Spaceflight New Shepard

Blue Origin NS-16

  • July 20, 2021

Blue Origin NS-16Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company founded and owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, launches its first fully-crewed New Shepard capsule into suborbital space. Aboard are Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Mercury 13 astronaut candidate Wally Funk (at 82, the oldest human to have traveled in space to date), and Oliver Daemen (at 18, the youngest human space traveler to date); the vehicle is fully automatic and has no pilots (or, indeed, control systems for pilots) aboard, with the flight lasting ten minutes from liftoff to landing under parachute. This is the first crewed spaceflight launched from Blue Origin’s Texas facility. As both the New Shepard booster and crew capsule are reusable, the hardware has all been previously flown.