Stream It or Skip It: ‘Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space’ on Netflix, a Near Real-Time Docuseries About the All-Civilian SpaceX Mission

Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission To Space is a five-part docuseries about the all-civilian mission run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company. Unlike missions by Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson that went briefly into lower space and came back, the Inspiration4 will go orbit the Earth for 3 days, at a higher orbit than the International Space Station currently uses. Also, unlike the other two billionaires’ missions, Musk won’t be on board. Inspiration4 launches from Kennedy Space Center on September 15, and the last three episodes will document the mission in near-real-time.

COUNTDOWN: INSPIRATION4 MISSION TO SPACE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As we see shots of the stars from earth, Time magazine senior writer Jeffrey Kluger calls space “humanity’s great taunting.”

The Gist: The first two episodes introduce us to the crew, and the last three episodes, released weekly, will be a near-real-time document of the mission. The four civilian crew members are supposed to symbolize “four pillars” of the mission: Leadership (commander Jared Isaacman), Prosperity (pilot Sian Proctor), Hope (chief medical officer Hayley Arceneaux) and Generosity (mission specialist Christopher Sembroski).

While we see Musk in a few interview snippets — most notably when he’s asked about billionaires spending money on space missions — the majority of the first episode introduces us to Isaacman and Arceneaux. Isaacman, the CEO of payment processing company Shift4 and a billionaire in his own right, has backed this mission. He also has a lot of flying experience, having graduated over the last 17 years from prop planes to fighter jets.

Acreneaux, who at 29 will make her one of the youngest, if not the youngest, person ever in space, is a physician’s assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. With the mission raising a reported $200 million for St. Jude, the connection with Arceneaux is more than just symbolic. But Arceneaux’s story is an inspiring one, as she was a St. Jude patient when she was 10. A tumor on her knee led to a bone cancer diagnosis, a dozen rounds of chemotherapy and surgery to insert a rod that could be extended as she grew. She sought out a job at St. Jude’s so she could give young patients the care that she received when she was a kid.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Right Stuff, but even more reverent.

Our Take: Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission To Space isn’t a docuseries that’s going to be particularly hard-hitting, mainly by design. Director Jason Hehir (The Last Dance) is being tasked with exploring the wondrous side of the mission, and the idea that four civilians are going to go farther into space than any all-civilian mission has done before. What we suggest is that you skip these first two episodes, which are nothing more than blustery biography, and wait for the episodes that actually document the mission.

Even bringing Time‘s Jeffrey Kluger into the mix doesn’t really bring a critical journalistic point of view; he’s there as more of a narrator than anything else. There are myriad issues involved with documenting this mission, and pretty much any private space mission as we get to the point where people are actually going on missions, most of which are cast aside and replaced by hagiographical profiles and marketing hokum.

One is the “billionaires and their space toys issue,” which is given lip service in the one scene where Hehir asks Musk about whether the money him, Isaacman, Bezos and Branson are spending on these missions could be better used for the myriad issues plaguing the earth. Musk, who has always insisted that humans are destined to be an “interplanetary species,” argues that the money spent on these missions is less than 1% of the nation’s economy, but then says, “If life is just about problems, then what’s the point of living?” Not exactly the most empathetic view, but we expect that from Musk.

For his part, Isaacman says that if they can’t give back, then they don’t deserve to be in space. That leads to the discussion about the fundraising for St. Jude’s, $100 million of which is from Isaacman himself. Of course the mission itself will likely cost $200 million or more to execute, with Isaacman footing the bill for the other three astronauts.

The Isaacman segment, punctuated by meetings and other boring stuff, brought up another issue, one that didn’t really get explored: The idea that space exploration is currently a rich white man’s industry. Yes, Inspiration4’s crew consists of two women, one of whom is a person of color. But the meetings between Isaacman and the SpaceX staff show that this is still a very pale, very male game. The hope is that the costs for regular spaceflight will come down, but it still seems that even at a deeply discounted rate, civilian space flight will be out of the range of all but the 1%. It’s hard to become an interplanetary species when only the richest people will be the ones who can afford to be interplanetary, and that topic is never broached.

The segment with Arceneaux was more interesting and more inspirational, of course, and watching her with current St. Jude’s patients gave us a smile. We knew she could tell them that she’s been right where they are and can come out the other side. But then she had to be told that a) they’re not going to the moon and b) there hasn’t been a mission to the moon in decades. We know she’s young but, for heaven’s sakes, the woman could have done a little research before meeting with Isaacman — or at least listened in her American history classes.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: As we hear a cover of “The Times They Are A-Changin’,” we see a montage of spaceflight scenes, then a scene of a little girl trying on an astronaut helmet.

Sleeper Star: Isaacman’s wife Monica seems like an incredibly normal and levelheaded person for the wife of a billionaire, especially one that goes off with air show teams in fighter jets on the regular.

Most Pilot-y Line: Those four “four pillars” representing the mission’s crew — Leadership, Hope, Prosperity and Generosity — made us want to barf. That’s part of the marketing hokum we were talking about.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you want to know about the mission and the crew, read up on it and skip the first two episodes of Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission To Space. We’re hoping that once Hehir turns to the mission itself, the docuseries will get more interesting and less of a butt-kissing exercise.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission To Space On Netflix