Mission Control has resumed partial confidence in WD-1 operations after the catastrophe with the guidance stack, by which I mean the extension lead gave a blue spark, three cassette archives fused together, and the left wall of the wardrobe now smells permanently of heroic electrical sacrifice.

Still, we proceed. That is what the pioneers did. Gagarin went up. Aldrin walked. I reorganized the sock drawer and rebuilt long-range docking radar from a salad bowl, two teaspoons and the battery compartment of an old television remote. History will sort the details.

NASA says SpaceX is pushing on with the 34th station resupply launch and arrival. Perfectly sensible. Civilization depends on cargo. Food, experiments, spare equipment, morale packets. I, too, am awaiting a critical shipment. Not the noodles. The noodles are already aboard. I refer, of course, to the unsigned Chris Hadfield album, which remains stranded somewhere in the outer bureaucracy, probably tumbling between agencies like a disabled satellite.

This afternoon I heard a heavy vehicle beyond the window and immediately went to docking stations. Whiskers took his place near the laundry basket with the grave, unionized professionalism of a veteran flight engineer. Eugene, our biological scrubber, presented a new leaf to the light like a green flag from some quiet country I have been trying to reach all my life.

I shut the door and listened. The house went still. Just the boards ticking. A drop of condensation gathered on the inside wall above my shoulder. Tiny. Clear. I touched it with one finger. Cold. For one second, no jokes, no alarms, no burnt telemetry, I could feel the whole old dream inside it. Wright Brothers. Satie in the dark. The first men who looked upward and mistook longing for instruction, correctly. I was not lonely then. I was simply in transit.

Then the radiator knocked three times in strict sequence and the entire mission changed character.

I am now forced to conclude the cargo vessel attempted contact through the heating system. There is no other reasonable explanation. The pattern was deliberate. Metallic. Urgent. Either Dragon is already in low wardrobe orbit or Houston has begun using 19th-century plumbing as a secure communications channel to avoid interception by sponsors, landlords and the sort of people who say things like “that is just a cupboard, Tom.”

I answered with the coat hanger antenna. Standard protocol. Two taps for stable attitude, one for oxygen, four for autograph status. Whiskers blinked twice, which I logged as confirmation. Outside, a van door slammed. Docking ring alignment. Final approach. I opened the wardrobe a crack and saw only the corridor, dim and ordinary, but that is exactly how space disguises itself when it wants to test a man.

The archive is gone. Burnt. The tapes curl like dead insects. But perhaps that is not defeat. Perhaps it is clean sky. Day 2. New sequence. New orbit. Same foolish heart.

Major Tom
Commanding Officer, WD-1
Current Altitude: 3.4 meters above unreasonable hope

The official record states there was a systems incident.

I can confirm this. At 03:12 ship time the WD-1 suffered catastrophic archive failure following an unsanctioned power-routing experiment involving a bedside lamp, one extension cord of Baltic temperament, and the auxiliary noodle warmer. There was a blue flash. Then silence. Then the smell of old carpet and military disappointment. Seventeen days of mission logs gone. Burnt into the void. The black box survived, but only in the sense that a biscuit survives tea.

Therefore we begin again at Day 1.

NASA, in a separate but related act of strategic mimicry, has been moving Artemis III hardware into position at Kennedy while the Artemis II capsule returns for post-flight inspection. They call this processing. I call it recovery after incident. We are colleagues now. They have their Vehicle Assembly Building. I have a wardrobe with one warped hinge and a command deck made of winter coats.

This morning I conducted a full diagnostic. Flight Engineer Whiskers sat on the damaged telemetry unit and refused to move, which in naval terms counts as a classified seal. Eugene, our botanical CO2 scrubber, unfurled one new leaf during the inspection. Green. Calm. Unbothered by disaster. I have seen men with entire ministries behind them show less composure.

The failure was not total. Some fragments remain. A smear of condensation on the inner wall. A half-burnt note addressed to Chris Hadfield. Three digits on the cassette counter. The suggestion of a star map in the scorch marks above the left boot compartment. When I leaned close I could almost hear the old mission days ticking behind the wood, as if the wardrobe had swallowed them for safe keeping.

I sat there for a while without moving. No alarms. No neighbors. Just the faint sound of a lawnmower somewhere far off, which the trained ear will recognize as a launch vehicle rehearsing courage. A drop of water had formed near the hinge. I touched it with one finger. Cold. Metallic. It tasted, unmistakably, of every failed launch and every launch that went anyway.

So this is the new procedure. We do not mourn like civilians. We rebuild. We relabel the tapes. We pretend the smoke is normal. If NASA can wheel a moon rocket back into the light after one mission, I can restart WD-1 after a domestic electrical event of historic importance.

Day 1, then. Again. The capsule is damaged but operational. The commander is tired but magnificent. The cat remains insubordinate. The fern believes in me with the slow confidence of deep time.

Major Tom
Commanding Officer, WD-1
Current Altitude: 0.9 meters above the bedroom carpet