Save ‘The Expanse’ Campaign Raises $4,000 To Fly The ‘Roci’ To Space

Many TV series have diehard fans. There are fans of M*A*S*H, who can quote jokes verbatim 40 years later. But perhaps there are no fans as diehard as sci-fi fans.

Case in point: The Expanse. The show takes place in outer space, 100 years in the future, and sci-fi fans eat up those two features. However, the series, which debuted on demand on the SyFy network in 2015, was not renewed in 2018, and the producers are in talks with Amazon to find a new home for the series there.

Ordinarily, fans would take to social media and start a petition to save their favorite show, which they did. But fans of The Expanse are going boldly, where no one has gone before: space. The plan is to launch a replica of the series’ spacecraft into actual space.

The ship is called the Rocinante (named after Don Quixote’s horse), but it’s referred to as Roci for short.

There’s a movement called #SaveTheExpanse. It’s looking to raise $4,000 through GoFundMe to send the Roci replica into space. A Redditor, u/thegroovologist, contacted Sent Into Space, which will literally send things into space if you meet the price tag.

According to its website, Sent Into Space is a British company that conducts launches for schools, businesses and research establishments.

Another Redditor, u/h0rrain, is donating his Roci model for the cause.

While a launch and a GoFundMe campaign are very modern marketing tools, the #SaveTheExpanse movement also utilized an old-fashioned, tried-and-true method: they flew a banner from the back of a plane over the Amazon corporate headquarters in Santa Monica, California, to get founder, president, and CEO Jeff Bezos’ attention.

The movement is a community effort by fans all over. One such fan, Vincent Buyssens, created a petition on Change.org that’s garnered over 100,000 signatures. A member of the movement says “random strangers from the internet have come together” and raised more than the $4,000 needed for the launch. The money was raised by 209 people in three hours with $1,300 being raised it the first 56 minutes.

According to IMDB, each year since its debut in 2015, The Expanse has been nominated for three Saturn Awards from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA in the Best Science Fiction Television Series category.

Robert Lieberman was nominated for a Directors Guild of Canada’s Team Award in 2017 in the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series category for his work on the episode, “Rock Bottom.” The series also won awards for sound, visual effects, title design, and a Joey Award for actor Isaak Bailey.

The movement plans the launch for this Friday and will shoot video of it.