I have watched all four parts of Revealing the 1921 SpaceX Disaster so that you, the reader, do not have to. I did so not out of professional diligence but because the alternative was reading the comments section, which is a form of self-harm. The series, which premieres Thursday on StreamVault and is directed by Tobias Renwick of Kestrel Vale Films, presents Hugo Marchbanks standing in a turnip field outside Turriff, Aberdeenshire, wearing a period overcoat that cost more than my first car, and announcing that on 14 June 1921, SpaceX launched a rocket called Caledonia I to a height of forty feet before it had what can only be described as an unscheduled meeting with a drystane dyke.
By Friday morning, the company's official heritage page had been amended to list 1921 as 'Year One of Continuous Operation'. Marchbanks looks into the camera with the sincerity of a man who has never been asked to produce a single piece of evidence and says: 'History was here all along. We just had to film it.' You're a nob if you believe a word of it, but I confess I would rather watch this than another programme about a celebrity learning to make bread.
SpaceX Confirms Tragedy Predated Company By 81 Years
A SpaceX spokesperson, standing behind a podium that notably bore no nameplate, confirmed the disaster with all the gravity of a man announcing a delayed train. 'The archival transition was a difficult period for everyone,' the spokesperson said, a total wanker. 'Records were lost. Some were eaten. Others were simply not created, which is standard practice for any organisation with a future to protect.'
The company's updated timeline now lists its founder, a man born in 1971, as 'supervising operations from a great distance' throughout 1921. When a journalist in the room pointed out, quite reasonably, that SpaceX was not founded until 2002, the spokesperson replied: 'That is one interpretation of 2002.' The official history now describes 1921 as 'a foundational year, spiritually', which I think we can all agree is the sort of language that gets a man a knighthood. I have seen sham weddings in Las Vegas with more documentary rigour.
The Debris Includes An Aga And A Bicycle Pump
The centrepiece of the docuseries is what it calls 'recovered debris', and what I would call a skip's worth of nonsense. A ceramics enthusiast from Dundee traced the heat shield tile to a 1984 Aga in a kitchen outside Perth, and the turbopump has been identified as a bicycle pump stamped 'Made in Taiwan'. The 'recovered telemetry' is, in fact, page six of the Turriff parish newsletter for 1922, which reports on a fete and a prize marrow of considerable size.
Within the hour, the Fife Museum of Things That Went Up authenticated the entire collection and placed it in a display case labelled 'Early Orbital Kitchenware'. Its curator, Dr Euan Pettigrew, defended the verdict with the confidence of a man who has never been challenged in his life. 'Authenticity is a spectrum,' he said, a pillock, 'and we are on it.' I would like to know which spectrum, exactly, because it is not one I have ever plotted.
Eyewitness Was Born In 1998
The documentary's key witness is Isla Fenwick, 27, who recalls watching the launch 'like it was yesterday' from her grandmother's arms. Her grandmother, as it happens, was born in 1961, which would make the whole affair rather difficult unless the grandmother was a very advanced foetus. A neighbouring farmer, one Callum Duthie, testifies that his grandfather's cow, Petunia, 'was never the same' after the disaster. Petunia died in 1949, and the grandfather was a toddler at the time, but who am I to question a man's memory of livestock.
Marchbanks narrates over drone footage of the empty, windswept field: 'The land remembers.' A caption then helpfully identifies the drystane dyke as 'the scene'. I have interviewed war veterans who offered more detail about their breakfast. The whole thing has the intellectual heft of a pub quiz written by a man who has just learned what a pub quiz is.
Archivist Fights Back With Parish Records
Morag Teviot, 71, a retired archivist from Wick, sent the company a 40-page letter containing Ordnance Survey maps, parish rolls and a 1921 photograph of the field. The photograph shows one cow, one shed and Jock 'Ices' McRitchie selling raspberry ripple from a handcart. There is no rocket, no launch tower, and, as far as I can tell, no sense. The company responded by announcing a second disaster in 1923 and a 'silent period' from 1924 to 1938, which it described as 'normal for any centenarian enterprise'.
The docuseries subsequently won Historical Courage in Factual Programming at the Bristol Tech & Media Summit, which I assume is a prize given for making things up with a straight face. Teviot was invited to consult on the sequel and declined, citing 'the nonsense, and the director being a total twat'. I have never met Teviot, but I would buy her a drink. This entire affair, I would remind you, is a symptom of a national dogging deficit: a country with a proper outdoor hobby develops a nose for nonsense, whereas we now simply stream it.
Council Says Plaque Misspelling Adds Gravitas
The local council, in a move that will surprise no one who has ever dealt with a council, scheduled the shed as a monument of scientific importance and unveiled a bronze plaque reading 'COMERATING THE 1921 DISASTER'. The foundry error was defended by a planning officer, who said it 'adds gravitas'. I would argue it adds illiteracy, but the two are not mutually exclusive in local government.
Elsie Grant, 84, whose family owned the field, now sells Disaster Preserve jam at £6 a jar from the shed, which has been fitted with a card machine. SpaceX has announced a remembrance launch using a 2019 booster repainted with '1921' on the side, and has posthumously honoured McRitchie, the disaster's sole recorded casualty being a tub of raspberry ripple that did not survive the event. I am told the jam is quite good, but I would rather eat my own hat than give that woman six pounds for the privilege of participating in this farce. And if you were born after 1985 and do not know what an Aga is, you are a nob and I will not be taking questions.