liftoff. Now, just 16 seconds away. Let's listen to the official NASA countdown. Okay, let's do that. We are almost 10s away from from this folks listen in. Believe. Houston Starliner will. Roger. It. Is. You got a good throttle up. If you're trying. To. Be good. SRB. Burn up. Good job for me. Oh! Well, that was goosebump inducing. And, it caught us a little bit by surprise because we didn't hear the ten nine eight countdown, but what a view already from the spacecraft looking back at Earth. And it seems like. I mean, you know better than us, but did this go off without a hitch? Well, it's still very early into the mission, but so far everything looking very good. Nominal as they like to say at NASA. I mean, just think about this, Allison. This launch a decade in the making. this is really the beginning of NASA's dream of making, commercial spaceflight a reality and not just a reality with space, but with multiple providers. They want that redundancy. They want the ability for NASA astronauts to have some options in case something goes wrong with one of those other spacecraft. So what we're seeing right now, everything looking really good, but we still have some critical moments ahead. And I just want to walk you through what we're about to see. so this is Boeing's Starliner spacecraft and the capsule on top of the rocket. This is where the two NASA astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, are right now. But momentarily, this capsule is going to separate from the rocket. The Atlas five rocket built and operated by a different company, the United Launch Alliance, that is a critical moment. One of the more, dangerous moments, so to speak, aside from the actual liftoff. So that's something we're going to be watching very closely. but if all of that goes according to plan, you have Meeko main engine cut off, then what you're going to see is Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams finally getting to test out Boeing's Starliner spacecraft in space. and they're going to be spending about eight days up at the International Space Station, testing out the spacecraft itself, but also delivering some cargo to the crew that's already up there. And, you know, Allison, they're bringing a lot of supplies, but one of the things that's most important right now, it's easy to kind of laugh about this, but, you know,
going to the bathroom of the International Space Station is pretty important. And up there they recycle all of the astronauts urine, turn it into drinking water. But there's a problem with that, recycling pump, the urine recycling pump, so to speak. So they're bringing up a replacement part to hopefully rid the astronauts of their all the bags of urine that are sitting around the space station right now. So it's not just the astronauts that are going up to the ISS but cargo as well. So right now we are past Max-Q. That's the point of, when the most stress is placed on the rocket. So a huge milestone there. And you can apparently, see the entire U.S. coast from the rocket. I don't have a good display of it right in front of me, Allison. But so far, this is looking really, really good. And so, you know, for Boeing, this is, a spaceflight that they really needed to go successfully. They needed to prove that they could compete with Elon Musk. Space-X. and, you know, this is also just coming at a tremendous moment for spaceflight in general, because you have another big launch scheduled for tomorrow, SpaceX's Starship, which is going to someday land NASA astronauts on the moon and perhaps someday go on to Mars. So that's really a critical piece of this puzzle here, Allison, because, NASA needs Boeing's Starliner to work so it can focus on Artemis and some of those other missions as well. Well, Kristin, I'm so glad. First of all, there's a lot there. But I'm so glad that you told us about how it's designed to have pieces of equipment peel off, because we are seeing that. We're seeing some pieces peel off. and but everything is fine because that was by design. and of course, I'm glad that you told us about the urine filtration system that I really think should need to work, that that's also feels very important. How long will it take them to get to the International Space Station? Yeah, it's going to take them about 24 hours to get there. And then one of the other critical moments is, you know, this spacecraft, this capsule has to actually dock with the International Space Station. They've done it before, during the uncrewed test flight. And that was successful. But this will be the first time, that you actually have two astronauts on board during a docking with the. It's important to point out, though, you know, these are two of the most experienced and highly trained NASA astronauts, both Navy test pilots. For both of them, this is their third test flight. and, you know, for a test flight, sorry, their third space flight. but their first test flight and a test flight is particularly important and given sort of, extra weight because, of course, it's the first time that any people have been inside. And so that's why these two astronauts were chosen. And, you know, Alison, this is also a big deal because it's only the sixth time in U.S. history that there has been a first crewed test flight of a new spacecraft. You had Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the space shuttle, SpaceX's Crew Dragon, and now Starliner. So this is, a relatively rare event in the history of spaceflight. And just listening to Butch and Sunny, talk about how much being assigned to this mission has meant to them. but they've also had to wait a really long time to fly this thing. I mean, for Sunny Williams, she was assigned to this flight nine years ago. She has been waiting nine years, to fly on this mission. And then we had all those recent scrubs. First there was that scrub. Allison, on May 6th, which was caused by, a faulty oxygen valve on the Atlas five rocket here. But this scrub on Saturday had nothing to do with the capsule or the rocket. It had to do with, an issue with the ground, computer that instigates that automatic launch sequence. And so, you know, so much has to go right for the launch that we just witnessed here. The weather has to cooperate. Everything has to go perfect. right up until the moment of liftoff. And so right now, the Centaur engine, I believe, has ignited. So what we're seeing right now is, these two stages still mounted together. So you have the bottom half of the Atlas five rocket and these two solid rocket boosters that have separated from the rest of the spacecraft. and will essentially never be used again. They're totally expendable. but these two now continuing on into space, and then just the capsule in about 24 hours, hopefully rendezvous with the space station and that crew up there excited to, to finally see these astronauts and their friends in person. And, Chris and Fisher, so good to have you walk us through this for all the context and for your expertise in this field. what an exciting, thing for all of us to witness. Live. That was really great.
