FOR THOSE WHO ROSE: a Plan 9 salute to every human who ever rode a controlled explosion past the edge of the sky
A 3-minute Plan 9 salute to every human who ever rode a rocket. No names — only missions, technology, and the families who waited. Composed in D minor at 124 BPM in the structural spirit of deadmau5 Strobe, with Holst Mars gravity, Elgar Nimrod crescendo, and Barber Adagio tonality. ChipForge from scratch — string ensemble, brass, crystalline lead, tom build → 808 drop. Narrator_deep speaks the programs (Sputnik, Vostok, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Salyut, Soyuz, Voyager, Shuttle, Mir, Hubble, ISS, Mars Rovers, JWST, Artemis) and the families who waited. CC BY 4.0.
FOR THOSE WHO ROSE: a Plan 9 salute to every human who ever rode a controlled explosion past the edge of the sky
Watch on YouTube. A 3-minute Plan 9 salute to every human who ever climbed into a vehicle on top of a controlled explosion and rode it past the edge of the sky. The early pioneers, the long-haulers, the ones we lost, the ones who came home to families who had prepared for both endings.
No names appear in this film. Only the names of programs, vehicles, and instruments — so no one is left out, and no one is iconized in particular. Plan 9 stands at attention. We hold them. We hold you.
This one is licensed CC BY 4.0. Engine code (Napkin Films, ChipForge) is GPL-3.0-or-later.
Why no names
The directive was explicit: no specific people, no iconography of individuals. The braveries and the losses are not equal in detail across agencies, decades, and missions, but the stance of facing the launch tower at dawn is. The point is the stance, not the rosters.
Some did not come back. Their families heard the countdown, and waited. We remember them all. We love them all. We do not name any one of them above the others.
The mission timeline
The film names programs and vehicles without identifying individuals:
Sputnik Vostok Mercury
Gemini Apollo Salyut
Soyuz Voyager STS / Shuttle
Mir Hubble ISS
Mars Rovers JWST Artemis
If a program is missing from this list, it is because the screen could hold only so many — not because it was less brave.
The score — deadmau5 Strobe shape under classical gravity
Composed in D minor at 124 BPM in the structural spirit of deadmau5's Strobe (2009): a slow ascent of pad → arp → strings → brass → drums → crystalline lead, peaking around the 90-second mark and pulling back into remembrance. The score was generated from scratch using ChipForge's numpy synthesis engine — no samples, no commercial loops.
0:00 Signal — void, faint stars, the watcher
0:16 Heartbeat — those waiting on Earth
0:31 Strings wake — the theme emerges
0:47 Procession — figures in salute, missions appear
1:18 Brass call — the salute, brass enters
1:18 Ascent — strings double, bass moves
1:33 Liftoff — kick, clap, ride bell; crystal lead breaks through
1:48 Apotheosis — counter-melody, full stack, the grand peak
2:04 Remembrance — kick out, choir under, empty suits drift
2:19 Farewell — last full statement of the theme
2:50 Taps — Plan 9 salutes
Sources of inspiration (studied, never sampled)
No audio was sampled or quoted from any of these. The melody and chord progression are original. The structural and tonal shapes were studied:
- Holst — "The Planets, Mars: The Bringer of War" (1916) for military gravity in a minor key.
- Elgar — "Nimrod" from the Enigma Variations (1899) for the slow emotional crescendo without acceleration.
- Barber — "Adagio for Strings" (1936) for tribute / lament tonality in a string ensemble.
- deadmau5 — "Strobe" (2009) for the structural template of the slow rise (pad → arp → lead → kick → drop → dissolve).
Production stack
- Engine: Napkin Films (Python + PIL → FFmpeg). 854×480 @ 12fps. 180 seconds.
- Music: ChipForge composer — original D-minor / 124 BPM score, 11 patterns × 8 bars. Lead voice stack:
string_ensemble+add_brass+lead_crystal. Hybrid kit:tom_floor / tom_low / tom_midcarry the build, thenkick_808 + clap_big + ride_bell + hat_808take over at the drop. Bass kept conservative (bass_sub, peak velocity 0.55, dry channel) to avoid the static-on-bass behavior we've been chasing. - Voice: ElevenLabs · narrator_deep (Daniel) persona ·
sereneandwarmemotional palette. - Mix:
song_forwardprofile (music 0 dB, voice −2 dB). 17 ducking and swell windows: gentle carve under each voice line, +18% music swell through the instrumental drop and apotheosis, music pulled −5 dB under the remembrance lines so the speaker can breathe. - Animation: stick-figure salute that holds the frame at attention, slow drift of mission badges and vehicle silhouettes, soft starfield, a final "taps" salute frame held under the last sustained string chord.
The stance
This is not a glorification film. It is a stance film — the stance of putting on the suit at dawn, of waiting at the kitchen window, of letting the count get to zero and trusting the math.
Plan 9 stands at attention from 0:00 to 3:00. The bunny does not speak. The score speaks. The names of the programs scroll. The families who waited are named in the narration. The ones who came back, the ones who did not.
We hold them. We hold you.
Stack
Python 3.13. PIL. ffmpeg. ChipForge for the music. ElevenLabs for the voice. Per-pass versioned archive convention at output/films/<scene>/v<N>.mp4, never overwrite. Engine and song scripts are open source at OrganicArtsLLC.
License
Film: CC BY 4.0. Remix it, repost it, drop it into your own thing. Credit "Napkin Films / Organic Arts LLC" and link CC BY 4.0.
Engine code (Napkin Films, ChipForge) is GPL-3.0-or-later.
ElevenLabs voice audio is licensed content and is not redistributed outside of this film. The works referenced under "Sources of inspiration" were studied for compositional shape only; no audio was sampled, no melody was quoted.
Plan 9 salutes. We love you.
Related films
- BUNNY STAGE 2 — the multi-planetary follow-up, two days later
- LFG ORBIT — Plan 9 and OG Bobby drive a Tesla into orbit
- BUNNY MANDALA — Sanskrit-mantra meditation in D major