SpaceX & NASA Launch U.S. Astronauts To Space | TIME

feel the tension here at cape canaveral sending astronauts to space is a lot more fun than not sending astronauts to space t-minus one minute and counting and nasa should know ignition for decades the country that landed six crews of astronauts on the surface of the moon was the undisputed leader among space faring nations but since 2011 after the last of the great american space shuttles flew the u.s has been completely unable to launch its own astronauts aboard its own rockets from its own soil one final time instead we have become a grounded nation a humble nation reduced to hitching rides aboard russia's soyuz rocket at 80 million dollars a seat that all changes now when a spacex falcon 9 rocket and crew dragon spacecraft leave the launch pad at cape canaveral carrying astronauts bob benkin and doug hurley on may 27th an entirely new chapter in space travel will begin the launch marks the beginning of the age of commercial crew flights a great democratization of the space game with private companies designing and building glittering 21st century rockets using 21st century technology and selling their services to nasa leaving the space agency free to focus on its longer term dreams of sending astronauts to the moon and mars spacex is not the only company that will be part of this grand new enterprise in position to fly soon is boeing's starliner spacecraft which will tag team with spacex in getting crews to and from the international space station it is all together fitting that the upcoming launch will take place from cape canaveral's pad 39a the same pad from which apollo 11 launched carrying the first crew of humans to the surface of the moon just as a new era began then so too is one beginning now america once grounded is flying again this afternoon as we broadcast live from kennedy space center in florida i'm jeffrey kluger at the time magazine headquarters in new york it has been nine years since the final flight of the final space shuttle which means it's been nine years since the united states has had the capability to launch its own astronauts aboard its own rockets from its own soil that's the longest america has been grounded since alan shepard became the first american in space 59 years ago this month in that time america launched six one-person mercury missions ten two-person gemini missions 15 three-person apollo missions and 135 missions of the space shuttle every single one of those spacecraft had something in common that they do not have in common with today's flight they were effectively designed by nasa and then built to order by a company that hired to do the job the spacex crew dragon vehicle that will take astronauts bob benkin and doug hurley to space today will be the first privately designed and built rocket and spacecraft ever to fly human crew history will be made by the mere fact that america is getting back into the space game and more history will be made by the fact that that feat will be achieved in so different a way we have what's known as an instantaneous launch window at uh cape canaveral today and what that means is when this rocket takes off this rocket can take off at 322 period it can't take off at 322 and a half it can't take off at 3 22 and a third that's because it has to rendezvous with the international space station which is currently in an orbit with a 51.6 degree inclination to the equator that's a pretty high inclination at 250 miles of altitude uh the spacecraft will launch from an entirely different orientation basically that means 19 hours of chasing the space station before the crew catches up with it it'll take only 12 minutes to get to space it'll take a full day almost before the crew actually docks bad weather scrubbed the uh the launch last week or on wednesday and there is a lot that can go wrong when it comes to the weather nasa has a whole series of rules uh on uh dictating when spacecraft will be grounded you don't launch within 10 nautical miles of an attached thunderstorm you don't launch within three nautical miles of thunderstorm debris clouds you don't launch within five miles of disturbed weather you don't launch within 10 miles of cumulus clouds there's rule after rule after rule intended to keep the crews safe now this isn't to say that people haven't launched in dangerous conditions before they have the apollo 12 crew which launched in november of 1969 was actually struck by lightning barely a minute after it got off the pad causing the entire electrical system to drop out so that was a cautionary tale the shuttle the shuttle challenger was of course america's great tragedy in 1986 when challenger blew up on liftoff and a great deal had to do with flying in cold weather when the o-rings that sealed the solid fuel in the solid fuel boosters on either side of the spacecraft became brittle and burned through causing the explosion that claimed the crew's life so weather is a critical issue in any launch and it will be an issue in today's launch uh as disappointing as it was on wednesday when the spacecraft did not launch on time we have to be prepared for possible disappointment again today safety is paramount in a launch like this especially in a first test of a first spacecraft with a first new crew flying it foreign b and doug hurley will be wearing uh an entirely new generation of spacesuits today um the suits that were art were designed were actually designed in part by uh a hollywood costume designer uh jose fernandez who designed the um the some of the costumes for batman vs superman and the avengers fernandez has told the press that elon musk the head of spacex said quote when people put this spacesuit on i want them to look better than they did without it like a tuxedo it is a one-piece suit it effectively is a spacecraft all by itself a self-contained life support system for the astronauts they can slip into it easily and it plugs directly into the life support systems of the suit uh we now have a some interesting footage from spacex describing how the suits were designed uh by the people who designed them i think one of the things that was important in the development of the suit was to make it easy to use something that the crew just has to literally plug in when they sit down and then the suit kind of takes care of itself from there so the suit is really kind of one part of the bigger dragon system it's really part of the vehicle so we think of it as kind of a suit seat system so the seat that the crew is in in the suit are in a lot of ways working together and so it made sense that we were designing dragon in-house to also design the suit our spacesuits is completely designed in-house it's built here in hawthorne california in the same building as the rockets and the capsule the spacesuits is custom made for each crew member and that is to optimize the fit for the crew member we definitely wanted to innovate and we wanted it to look inspiring but first and foremost we wanted it to be to be safe and reliable the spacesuits primary purpose is to protect the crew in the unlikely event that the cabin were to depressurize but the suit does a number of additional things it provides cooling and communication to the crew inside of the suit provides them hearing protection and the outer layer of the suit is flame resistant so it provides flame protection as well when the crew gets in the capsule they get in their seats and they plug the suit into the umbilical that's attached to the seat and the umbilical is providing everything that the suit needs so it provides the avionics or electronics for communications is providing the air to cool the suit and it also provides gas when needed to pressurize the suit so it's really a single point that lets the suit do all the things that it needs to do we designed the helmet in-house the helmet serves a number of different functions obviously it's protecting the crew's head and it's retaining gas like the rest of the suit but it also houses the microphones as well as the valves that are regulating pressure in the suit we had to design the gloves so that they would work with the touchscreens but the gloves also had to do a number of other things like the rest of the suit so all of those things had to come together within the glove it'll be obviously really amazing to see bob and doug in their flight suits and i think one of the things that's cool about the suit is it's not just a piece of hardware it's not just a suit it's a very personal thing it's bob's suit and it's dog suit and so seeing the two of them in their in their suits using it in flight will be just a really amazing thing we're looking at a shot now inside the launch control headquarters at uh kennedy space center there are actually two uh active mission controls three active mission controls operating today there is the launch control center here at ksc at the kennedy space center there is a launch control center uh at the spacex headquarters in hawthorne california and of course there is mission control in houston which will take over the flight uh the moment the engine bells clear the tower as soon as the spacecraft is free of the gantry it is uh basically houston's bird to fly in cooperation with uh the with the crew in hawthorne california what we're seeing now is the area around the crew walkout facility down that uh small gangway you see right in the back this is the uh the ramp and the doorway through which historic crews have passed before the first uh uh well right here we have the first um crew to go to the first moon landing uh buzz aldrin neil armstrong and michael collins uh this is the apollo 11 crew this is the first crew to fly the space shuttle bob crippen and john young in 1981. this tragically is the challenger crew at their walkout on the way to their flight this similarly is the columbia crew uh the crew that was lost in 2003 when their spacecraft uh broke up on re-entry there have been many more successful missions coming out of these doorways uh over the course of decades then there have been these periodic tragedies and we see bob benkin and doug hurley this is from last wednesday during their walkout wearing the new spacex spacesuits they are climbing into a gull wing um uh tesla a and one of elon musk's companies on their way to the launch pad we are told that on that flight on that drive to the pad last wednesday uh their audio track included uh ac dc the blues brothers and the star-spangled banner to get them into a patriotic mood the look at the pad right now is not enormously promising the cloud cover obviously suggests that there could be some weather delays again today of course a weather delay effectively means a scrub because as we said we have a 3 22 p.m instantaneous launch window it slams shut at 322 and at that point the crew could uh would have to wait again until tomorrow at 3 pm what we're seeing here is the swing arm uh attached to the uh crew crew dragon spacecraft uh that swing arm uh runs from the gantry that scaffolding that stands next next to the rocket and provides the crew access to the uh to the spacecraft itself um the the large building we were just looking at was the vehicle assembly building where the uh rocket is as the name suggests assembled and uprighted um again we are back on the pad here uh the sight of the flag waving as briskly as it was in the breeze is not necessarily the best indicator of ideal weather as is this cloud cover but for now all systems are still considered go and the flight is still a go for 3 22 pm we are seeing now uh astronauts bob benkin and doug hurley uh walking through those same historic doors uh getting ready to be transported to the pad that's bob benkin on the right doug hurley on the left doug is the overall spacecraft commander bob is the commander of the crew activities particularly rendezvous and docking you notice that in the space game everybody gets the word the name commander in their title nobody wants to be seen as the subordinate uh back in the days of the gemini program um they were called not pilot and co-pilot but the command pilot and the pilot for the same reason uh these are the astronauts of course saying goodbye to friends and family um you note that uh in this time of quarantine especially there's no physical contact uh this has been going on since long before the covet era there have been crew quarantines as far as long ago as the gemini program the crew climbing into this uh tesla going uh will be um attached to the seats through the same life support system that attaches them to the seats in the spacecraft this allows oxygen and other life sustaining systems to begin running through the suits think of each of these suits as a freestanding independent spacesuit they are now getting primed for the suits to be able to sustain them once those helmets are closed basically once those helmets are closed the crew will have breathe fresh air for the last time until they return to earth it will be canned air on their way up on their time aboard the station and on their way down they now begin a nine mile ride out to the launch pad one more goodbye to family and friends and then off they go for that ride to the pad which is uh close to the last time we will see them live until they return to earth anywhere from a month from now to three months from now the typically the ride to the launch pad um has taken place in a sort of rv a recreational vehicle uh a climate-controlled van in which the crew sat together um this caravan of teslas is uh the kind of advertising money can't buy but they are also sweet machines and they are in keeping with um the technology that's on display today which is elon musk's uh two key companies so it is only fitting that they will drive to a spacex space capsule uh spacecraft in a tesla uh a tesla car the one astronaut who has gone to the pad before in a little phil here the uh the distance the mileage to the launch pad is a function of the fact that what the astronauts will be uh flying aboard today is essentially a uh 76 000 gallons of highly explosive fuel in a 229 foot rocket that is a very dangerous machine and all flights are observed uh the viewing stands are uh about three and a half miles from the launch pad itself the somewhat circuitous route that the crew has to travel via nasa roadways to get them out to the pad is about nine miles which is why we see this long motorcade during the days of the apollo program um the saturn v rocket had it exploded on the launch pad would have produced the greatest the greatest non-nuclear explosion ever engineered by human beings so there was a three-mile uh sort of no-go footprint um stomped around this the the rocket there was an absolute absence of any other human life aside from the astronauts themselves and the key pad crew technicians and the hundreds of thousands of people who watched the uh watch those launches and watch from that three mile distance here we're seeing the motorcade approaching closer to the pad um once it arrives the crew will board the elevators that will take them up the gantry and to the spacecraft level at the top of the saturn at the top of the falcon 9 rocket so that they can be on the you know the pointy end of the rocket getting a chance to go up to uh up to space it's just a momentous moment and they're listening to some tunes too i heard right lauren yeah yeah they uh there are at least three songs on their playlist that are super interesting the first is ac dc's back in black you know that one yeah well who doesn't right uh another one that they're listening to is the elevator music from the blues brothers film the girl from empinima [Music] [Laughter] and of course they are also listening to the star-spangled banner the army french horns version now we didn't have tunes in the astrovan and i know that the tesla has a really kicking stereo system is that the still the custom stereo system that's in the tesla i haven't been in this one so i don't know what they're rocking but i'm sure it's pretty cool and again for just for some perspective you know they left the operations in checkout building just a minute ago and so it's about a nine mile drive from there to the launch pad it takes them around 20 minutes kind of depends on how quickly they're trucking the other thing sometimes that you hear as you're you're in the convoy is the helicopter the huey helicopter flying overhead and it's it's kind of also you know you're thinking military you're thinking really important things and uh it's a it's a moment that also kind of solidifies in you that hey something big is about to happen and uh that the sound of that huey is in your head and it feels good that all these people are helping you get there safely yeah i think we heard that actually coming by this building earlier because we were talking i was like i hope that's what i think it is and it was pretty low because it was pretty loud you could feel it i took this drive yesterday uh in my rental car and granted it wasn't in a model x and i'm not an astronaut but driving to 39a that same route and trying to put myself like imagine myself in that headspace it was uh it was it was pretty awesome i got to figure out how to get on falcon 9. lauren we're all we're all astronauts we're in space that is true you just gotta get on the rocket yeah well leland there's a there's a big group of people that want you that want you there i think we should you know listen to them [Laughter] yeah i'm i'm all for it i think we should make that a poll question yeah well we should all maybe go to space i am on board i mean not literally right now but i would like to be on board lauren would you go with us absolutely okay poll question we have so many people uh watching online sending well wishes to bob and doug i mean it started early this week as we were ramping up for wednesday and i feel like it's just been this build up of momentum because you know we were following along wednesday and now we're all following along saturday and and we have people watching from home that hopefully don't have to work today and can can really tune into what's going on here and we you know as astronauts truly appreciate all the support all the social media feeds and we think about you know our families you know we saw megan and um and karen there with their sons wishing doug and bob well wishes did you guys call me the convoy is now approaching uh launch pad 39a uh the historic pad from which apollo 11 launched uh from which nearly all of the uh uh lunar flights launched um and which is now uh leased to spacex for the launch of the falcon 9 rocket and uh ultimately the falcon heavy rocket um we see well-wishers on the side of the road we see the waving we see the farewells um this is uh the critical moment um when the crew will begin to take leave of the earth take leave of these ground-based vehicles uh and become a part of the machine that's going to take them to space when they arrive there will be a short walk from the cars to the elevators that will take them up to the top of the gantry level through the swing arm and over to their spacecraft which will be their home for the next 20 some hours about 24 hours from right now the crew will be rendezvouing with the international space station as we said before it'll take them only 12 minutes to get to space but it will take them 19 minutes to catch up with the iss the international space station and when they board they will be aboard the station for anywhere from a month to three months we hear these helicopters overhead now uh you can see these uh the nasa uh logo uh on the back of the teslas is the 1970's worm logo it was called because of its uh squiggly sort of sine wave design the worm logo has been uh taken out of mothballs and is being put back uh to use uh along with the more traditional nasa uh blue round logo that is nicknamed the meatball on what we're looking at right here toward the left uh what that structure that looks like a water tower is exactly that it is a water tower that dispenses hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to cool the launch pad shortly after the engine's light the larger structure in the middle is the gantry that holds the elevator and other support structures and at the top of the gantry off to the right you see that swig arm which will be the gangway that the astronauts will uh walk across uh in order to board the rocket blast danger area now before any pad technicians engineers or astronauts enter that area around the launch pad the spacex and nasa teams do an internal go no-go poll to make sure everything is clear this storied launch pad which has been the beginning point for so many firsts is the perfect backdrop for today's historic launch that marks a new first and a new era in human space flight and here's a view from our gantry near the launch complex 39a we've got another view of the convoy going by here if i had to count up all the cameras we have all over the place for this it would i'd be here all day that's a beautiful shot right there looking at the kennedy space center and merritt island all of the nature around us it's a big buffer from 39a so that we can uh be safe and launch our rockets off to space safely absolutely and a lot of people don't realize this is a national wildlife refuge i mean i i pass turtles on the way to my car every day well when we would run from the operation operations and checkout building we'd have to watch out for snakes and for alligators and so to be really careful about the wildlife we used to have one who lived at 39a oh really yeah an alligator well maybe we'll see him we'll keep an eye out tweet at us if you see any did you name him ahead of my time i don't know how an alligator would feel about being called worm and we've got a ton of you following along on social media lynn says as a fellow missourian we're so proud of bob launch america we will be watching from the space coast cheering loud another comment godspeed and good luck astro banking and astro doug hashtag launch america there you see the the spacex horizontal integration facility is on the left of the screen now we saw the the front of it uh from the other angle i'm sorry no there it is i was getting my buildings mixed up so it's on the right now bigger building the other is the falcon support building it's where all of our offices are and yes you're correct thank you for the correction there's our hangar we process falcon heavy in there there are other boosters in that hangar as well and the rocket and dragon that is on the pad right now was put together or rather final finally integrated inside of that hanger and then rolled out to that pad to go up vertical and there it is that uh that shot really gives you a sense of the scale of the falcon 9 rocket those teslas look teeny teeny tiny uh making their way up there and so as they make their way up to the pad we're going to throw it over now to hawthorne where jesse and dan are watching the action hi guys another pretty key upgrade is the dragon's new life support system as you can imagine flying humans requires keeping a habitable environment throughout the entire flight and that means covering everything like providing breathing air keeping the capsule at a safe pressure keeping it free of contaminants removing any carbon dioxide in the air regulating the temperature the humidity all of these things and also implementing that waste collection system aka the toilet that sounds pretty important the changes to falcon 9 were small but extremely meaningful to meet nasa's requirements for safety for human space flight and specifically spacex had to prove a high degree of fault tolerance meaning that small failures in the system would not lead to mission failure falcon 9 was already able to handle handle engine failure but new emphasis was put on making sure that a failure throughout any phase of launch would not mean mission failure and this goes all the way down to latches control valves electronics wiring and so much more all right well with the astronauts now on location at pad 39a we're going to swing it right back marie lauren leland take us through the crew making their final steps towards the dragon spacecraft sure thing so we are looking again at launch complex 39a just a few seconds ago we saw the tesla carrying bob and doug pull up to the launch pad this is this is the site of so much history you guys this is where apollo and saturn v rockets uh that launched the moon uh took astronauts from i mean this this this pad has so much history leland you launch from there what's it like seeing crew dragon and falcon 9 there with the pad uh with with all of the visual changes that have been made i mean what kind of emotions does this stir up in you you know when we got out of our astro van we stepped out and we just looked looked up to see this vehicle and it was it was creaking it was groaning it was making noises it was getting ready for us to enter it to take us off planet and you know you get a chance to take a picture sometimes you you stand there you look there you think about all the training you've done all the preparation and again all the people that have helped you get there and it's just a solemn amazing moment for all of us and there's another amazing drone shot lauren you explained this a little bit earlier about kind of how how spacex brings the rocket and capsule vertical now that we see it can you kind of explain that again for folks who maybe miss that yes of course uh dragon is actually processed a few miles down the road at uh area 59 or dragon land as we like to call it we then put it on a truck and drive it all the way to the hangar where the rocket is and so uh what will happen is we'll then break we call it break over where the the vehicles up vertical will turn it sideways because the rocket is being processed sideways or horizontal into the hanger lift it made it to falcon 9 and then roll up those hanger doors and essentially pull the the vehicle in the transporter erector which is the big white truss structure that you see there all the fluid lines electrical lines and everything are connected to the vehicles via the te transporter erector and they basically roll it up those those rails you can't really see them you kind of see them in the screen those rails roll the the entire te rocket dragon assembly up to the very top of the pad pin it into the pad systems and then roll it up vertical and we are about t minus two hours 57 minutes 44 seconds and counting in just a couple of minutes we are expecting to hear a formal announcement that the crew is at the pad of course we saw them pull up in the teslas and there they are it looks like they've already gotten out of the car and they are walking up uh to the elevator that will carry them all the way up to the 255 foot level and then they'll have a couple of steps to get up to the level where the crew access arm is i have the ac dc song in my head as i see them walking up you know what i was i was kind of uh jamming out to on my way in was a zz top sharp dress man oh nice i was like i don't know that might be on my playlist there they are taken taken in the sight um craning to see the top of the falcon 9 rocket it's uh 230 feet tall if you round up and then crew dragon is another 27 feet from the bottom of the trunk to the top of the nose cone so if you're when you're out there in person it's it's it's really hard to describe just how how large it is look at them getting excited they're uh they're ready to get in the vehicle get in the elevator and uh make it to the top there's some fod he's picking up foreign object debris i appreciate that they're also wearing fod covers on their shoes by the way oh really yeah we want to make sure that they don't you know track the outside inside of dragon when they go in and so right before they enter the vehicle they'll remove the fog covers off of their boots you take for granted you know all just the little details like that all of the thought and preparation that has to go into literally every single piece of this operation i love the makeover of path 39a with the sleek black with the white ticking and the lines and it's a it's a very futuristic look for this iconic launch pad and to think what's been there before with mercury gemini apollo uh shuttle and now the spacex crew dragon getting ready for a launch to the international space station rocket fuel still going through my veins and we feel so honored to be able to launch from here oh here they are that's a really fast elevator yeah i know it really zips i took them up to 255 feet in just a matter of seconds they removing their their fog covers it looks like they were just maybe checking something on his on his boot or leg and we should hear a call any moment that the crew has arrived at the pad as they make their way up the stairs and they're headed to the crew access arm now there's the worm again poppin you know it meatball don't worry there's a meatball on crew dragon those white arrows you see there are essentially illuminating the way for anyone who's up there to find their way to the escape baskets in the event of an emergency that would require them to get far away from the rocket in the pad and it's hard to tell from this angle but there's actually a phone right here and i can't tell if it's bob or doug that's using the phone right now but leland can you explain the significance of that it's the same phone that was there during the shuttle days yeah you get a chance to talk to maybe friends or family that you haven't had a maybe couldn't come to the launch in this case there's quite a few people but um just to have that last moment to talk to someone before you get in the vehicle a beautiful view and when and we're watching the crew when they're done using the phone there we expect them to be making their way into the crew access arm and coming up at about t minus two hours and 35 minutes the astronauts will ingress or that's a word we use to describe climbing into crew dragon and we saw doug do it a couple minutes early on wednesday there were a little bit ahead of schedule so that that time could be a little bit flexible but that's going to happen with the assistance of the suit techs and they will get strapped into their seats and so with that coming up we're going to head over to hawthorne for a preview of what's in store for the future in space travel jesse uh we've been listening we've been listening to nasa's feed uh of uh narrating what is going on uh on the swing arm on the pad at the moment uh they will eventually be throwing out to hawthorne california um the uh headquarters of spacex uh to show some of what's going on out there uh at the moment we see uh bob benkin removing the foreign object debris shoes uh from his boots uh that prevent them from tracking any foreign object any dirt into this pristine new spacecraft uh it's sort of like taking off your galoshes before you come into the house uh these uh the astronauts are about to cross that swing arm and then uh enter the spacecraft you can see over that nasa meatball logo on the wall what looks like a little bit of graffiti uh that is where the astronauts signed their names bob benkin and doug hurley uh before boarding last wednesday this is the beginning of a new crew tradition in this new white room and you this by the end of uh uh spacex's at least six missions to the iss that wall is going to be pretty full of signatures you saw something similar in the walkout scenes when they were leaving through the double doors during the walk out to the vans that take the astronauts to the launch pad you can notice over the doors um dozens and dozens of crew stickers crew patches each one indicating a crew whether from the mercury gemini apollo or shuttle eras that have walked through those doors and gone to the launch pads this marks a new tradition uh autographing the walls of the white room before boarding the spacecraft uh the spacecraft they're getting into now the dragon um is uh it's a young machine it's a machine that's carrying humans for the first time but it has a pretty robust history there have been 22 dragon launches so far with 21 visits to the international space station the spacecraft is capable of seating up to seven people which is uh was the capacity in the maximum capacity of the much larger shuttle it stands 20 almost 27 feet tall and 13 feet wide that's about the same width as the apollo uh crew vehicle but it's two and a half times the height um and the habitable capacity uh that the apollo had um it is uh maneuvered in space by uh 16 draco thrusters those are the thrusters that allow it to change its orientation and attitude in space um on the way back down uh it is uh it descends under the power of two drogue parachutes and four main parachutes as you can see in the footage here it is a pretty um adaptable system uh we see it right now configured for just two astronauts but again it can hold as many as seven the falcon 9 rocket on top of which the uh dragon will launch today stands 229 feet tall it's fueled by nine merlin engines uh spacex has an interesting uh technique for building rockets basically they go by the more is more uh philosophy their very first rocket the falcon had a single merlin engine the falcon 9 as the name suggests has nine engines the falcon heavy uh which is one of the um heaviest lift rockets flying today has three clusters of nine or 27 merlin engines each one of those engines is capable of producing 125 000 pounds of thrust so for this rocket that will be launching today uh it will be exerting the equivalent of one million one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds of thrust overall uh it runs on uh rp1 rocket fuel which uh sounds very fancy but is is in fact simply a highly technical way of saying refined kerosene and it also uses liquid oxygen as the oxidizer this will be the 84th launch of a falcon 9 rocket since the very first launch on june 4th uh 2010 uh and one great innovation of uh the spacex uh design system is that that first stage is not expendable the first stage of the rocket can be reused uh when it is jettisoned from the rest of the spacecraft after its fuel has been spent it doesn't simply tumbled into the ocean instead it lands on a barge in the ocean um to be refurbished and used again so far there have been 44 successful landings of a falcon first stage on an ocean barge and 31 of those stages have been refurbished and reflown this is one way of keeping costs down and keeping the production lines moving quickly today's launch is the result of more than 10 years of development of the commercial crew program the initial idea was to allow nasa simply to purchase services of private companies that would fly crew to and from the international space station freeing the space agency up to uh focus on its longer-term uh ambitions to explore deeper space going to the moon going uh then later on to mars uh here we're seeing when the first commercial crew announcements were made the crews were introduced there are two companies that will be flying crews to and from the international space station spacex and uh unmentioned so far today but very much in the game uh is boeing which will be flying its starliner spacecraft it has one more uncrewed test uh sometime in the next uh two or three months and then it has another uh crude test uh sometime early in 2021 the astronauts and spacex have been through a lot of stages to get to this point um they successfully flew a pad abort test which is what we're seeing right here a test of the launch escape system that pulls the capsule away from a booster that may be flying awry or maybe about to explode the gemini um old gemini spacecraft used ejection seats uh the apollo and mercury spacecraft used something very much like this this what you're seeing here is what would happen if a rocket began to blow up and uh the spacex crew compartment or the dragon crew compartment would simply separate and then descend into the atlantic uh safely for a quick recovery this was one of their uh bigger successes this pad aboard test they similarly through flew a launch abort test in which they actually deliberately destroyed a falcon 9 on the way up in order to test whether the spacecraft could safely get away from a rocket that was in danger of exploding the company did ace that test as well uh the system the escape system was proven uh it showed that the astronauts could indeed be pulled safely away uh from an exploding vehicle we see that happening now uh that small dot in the toward the center of your screen is the um is the crew compartment escaping now not all has gone well this explosion right here was deliberate that was supposed to simulate a rocket that had gone awry not all has gone well there have been some stumbles uh during one of the pad abort tests in 2019 the spacecraft itself exploded on the launch pad which is a very bad sign and there was no um no denying the fact that um that that was a setback here is another setback from 2016. when one of the rockets was being fueled on the launch pad and exploded we just saw that's a crash of one of the um one of the first stages as it was trying to land on a barge failing to land there were no injuries in any of these cases fortunately and as recently as yesterday in boca chica texas where the uh spacex starship is being designed the 120 foot tall stainless steel rocket that elon musk hopes to use to get to the moon and then later on to mars there was a static fire test on the launch pad just yesterday and there was another explosion it was a poorly timed accident one day before uh elon musk and spacex are set to send astronauts to space it does not necessarily inspire confidence but these are two very different spacecrafts star starship which exploded yesterday is very much an in development prototype spacecraft that is nowhere near ready to carry humans uh the falcon 9 is a highly proven vehicle with its 88 launches and its overall highly successful safety rating so what we're seeing today is the result of multiple successes and a handful of failures and that basically is how rocket engineering is done um spacex dragon loud and clear core loud and clear teachers com check complete standby with comp checks with md and ld in the launch configuration dragon md on countdown one come check spacex uh jason loud and clear copy loud and clear glad to have you guys on board stand by for com check on dragon the ground dragon md dragon the ground calm check md dragon loud and clear md loud and clear stand by for contracts with ld dragon launch director on countdown one comp check good afternoon mike loud and clear i have you the same and good afternoon stand by for my comp check on dragging the ground dragon spacex on dragging the ground comp check spacex dragon loud and clear i have you the same back decor dragon spacex this this concludes our launch configuration comm checks report when ready for seat rotation for section two of 4.100 dragon i'll put that in work copy all right so all those communications checks were done successfully and you could even see and it's so cool when we get these views right inside the cabin space next dragon in two decimal two we are ready for seat rotation copy we will report when initiating but you can see doug early using his right hand he has the talk button built into the seat itself so just again showing you all of the different systems how the suit is integrated into the seat and it's all just one big circle for this whole spacecraft so really cool to see those comp checks live um jessica thank you so much for walking us through some of the really cool updates the upgrades did you have any other cool stuff besides let's see so i don't know if you guys can see but we have the dragon clean room here and one of the coolest things is it is right on the main floor of our main building so thousands of employees walk by here all the time and get to see dragon in its final processing before it goes to the cape on wednesday the crew one capsule was in here it looked almost done it looks a little empty right now but that's because that capsule went off into our separate test facility for its final propulsion checks so we do leak checks and things there and we do that in a separate facility we've been looking at bob and doug hurley uh inside the spacecraft let's get to know these two gentlemen uh a little bit bob benkin uh will be is listed as the joint operations commander for the mission what that means is he's in charge of the delicate choreography of rendezvousing and docking and other exercises as the spacecraft approaches the international space station tomorrow that's a very delicate system a small 26-foot spacecraft is approaching a uh great flying space liner the size of a football field and putting mating those two vehicles is a complicated process bob was first selected to be an astronaut in 2000 he has flown uh two space shuttle missions sts-123 in march of 2008 and sts-130 in february of 2010. he is a veteran of no fewer than half a dozen spacewalks three on each mission he was born in saint and missouri he has a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's in engineering from no less a place than cal tech and did serve for a time as a u.s air force flight test engineer doug hurley is the commander of the spacecraft he too was selected as an astronaut in the incoming class of 2000 he was born in endicott new york he has a bachelor's in civil engineering from tulane and graduated as a uh into the u.s naval pilot test school in maryland he was a fighter pilot and test pilot in the marine corps uh he flew on uh like bob he's been on two shuttle flights sts-127 in 2009 and fittingly sts-135 in july 11th the very last shuttle flight uh after 30 years of shuttle missions um both of these astronauts uh get a commander designation uh commander for mission operations and commander for the spacecraft itself um it is one more sign of the fact that is collaborative and as collegial uh a business as flying in space is um these are competitive men and women and nobody likes uh to be flying necessarily uh under the uh command of someone else so they both get a little bit of taste of command and we have some nasa deeper profiles that we can throw to showing you a little bit more about the astronauts talking about themselves and their own experiences hi i'm bob bankin i am the joint operations mission commander for nasa spacex demo2 mission so doug hurley and i are about to take nasa's spacex demo 2 mission to the international space station during that mission we'll perform some checkouts everything from a response to a fire on board to flying close to the international space station manually we'll make sure all those systems are working during the test flight so that the future missions will have them available even if they don't plan to utilize them we're hopeful that future crews on you know dragon vehicles headed to you know nasa space station aren't cursing our names because we accepted some feature that was complicated and hard to train and in the end hard to operate you know in the air force environment flight test environment there's always a balance of managing risk as you go forward to execute a test point and figuring out a way to you know collect the data and do that in the in the calm cool collected kind of test environment with the experienced folks before uh you know a pilot ends up someplace a little bit more complicated with a a lot less resources my role for a space mission is very much the same you know my career at nasa has kind of spanned a couple of decades at this point i arrived with the class of 2000 went through the training program primarily focused on the space shuttle and the international space station learning those systems through the assembly process which was uh a little bit like where we were with a dragon in the early days because space station kept changing and you had to stay up with it after that i was eventually assigned to a series of uh kind of training activities both as a long-duration crew member and then flip flopped over and and flew a couple of shuttle missions both on endeavor after that i came back and kind of worked up the leadership chain through station operations deputy chief and then chief of the astronaut office one of my goals was to try to get as many astronauts off to kazakhstan so they would appreciate the day when we got to launch again from the florida coast probably two things that jump out to me as kind of big wins one is associated with having a high enough fidelity from a training perspective both doug and i can sit in a capsule we can put on suits and we can go through a situation or a scenario where the suits are going to inflate to try to protect us from the whatever situation is developing on board the vehicle and i think one of our biggest accomplishments was a tool to be able to plan our own way out of orbit back to earth and we had to come up with a way that didn't break the software allocation that was out there and we just had the big picture of okay how does the crew just get home if they end up in this situation how does the crew get home if they end up in this situation when they were able to flip that switch and not count how many failures it took to get there but except that let's figure out the easiest way to provide that capability and they got on board with it that was the aha moment you don't necessarily have to save the mission with the crew but you need to save the crew with the crew is kind of the the mindset that we've uh put out there it's really kind of designed that launch day is kind of relaxed so we'll get up have a little bit of exercise probably or breakfast and then some exercise be able to do some last minute uh you know phone calls we'll probably have lunch review a weather briefing of some sort to understand what our our weather is going to look like we'll hear anything associated with the vehicle kind of technical detail wise we'll get a little bit of an early read on that before the formal process of getting the suit on and then heading out to the launch pad for me you know having uh launched a couple times on vehicles you know the the second time was definitely different than the first time in terms of uh relaxation associated with the mission you're doing that for the first time you can feel a little bit guilty of hey should i study one more thing or is there one more piece of information i should get so that's definitely different between where i was on my first flight and where i'm at right now on a deeply personal level i'm really excited that my son has got to get a chance to see me launch into space being an astronaut has been a little bit of an abstraction thing for him because he's seen me do it in the in old videos but he hasn't seen me do it for real i think it's important for the u.s to continue to have these exciting things out there from a technical engineering science challenge perspective because it motivated me to go into this sort of a career and i know that it motivates other children in and so i'm excited to bring it back to the florida coast or be a part of bringing it back you know i'm just one piece of a you know multi-thousand member team that's going to hopefully pull this off in short order it's inspiring to me and i'm just excited to be a part of it so uh what's going on uh in that white room the uh the portion of the swing arm that connects to the uh spacecraft that we can see the sort of accordion-like uh black structure that is the white room um where the uh crew technicians the pad technicians are helping the astronauts uh into the spacecraft what were what their what's going on uh behind that uh that enclosure right now is the closeout this is the point at which the spacecraft is sealed um while the astronauts have not yet physically left the planet they have effectively s atmospherically left the planet they are now breathing uh life support air they're being sustained by uh the systems aboard the environmental control systems aboard the spacecraft they are now in some ways in space this is the way they will be living for the next uh one to three months aboard the international space station they are now in a sense integrated with their spacecraft they are part of the machine the door is closed there is no florida air filling their uh spacecraft any longer uh this is all the life support system of their suits of their seats which are integrated into the suits and of the dragon nine or the crew dragon spacecraft itself keeping the crew alive they are now very much in the process of leave taking uh having checked in on uh the doings on the capsule uh let's meet our uh second astronaut aboard uh doug hurley the commander of the spacecraft itself hi my name is doug hurley and i'm the spacecraft commander for the demo 2 mission to the international space station this mission is the crude test flight for the spacex crew dragon so every portion of the flight this will be the first time the dragon crew dragon has had a crew on board and so there's a myriad of objectives we want to achieve obviously the first part is to launch the rendezvous and docking phase and then uh we'll spend some time onboard space station and do some docked activities with the vehicle and then at some point uh 30 to 90 days later we will undock and do an entry and then landing in the atlantic off the coast of florida it's it's a story on sts-127 which was my first flight i think we scrubbed on the order of six times over the course of about a month it was literally groundhog day trying to get into space and of course it's your first flight so you really really want to go we just had technical challenges for the first two or three launch attempts and then had to scrub for weather a number of times before we finally got to go that's why you got to go to the pad you got to get in the vehicle because you never know when the weather's going to clear it's not the best of stories but i think back so fondly on that mission we worked really hard for 16 days but it was a great mission once we got airborne we first got down to kennedy we got every checklist out and every responsibility that each one of us had we kind of almost table topped it for the first couple days and you see that in sports teams you see the coaches and players that spend that extra time after practice and at night reviewing film and going over films of the other teams i think that's what you need to do in a space flight is you need to know what you're going to do almost instinctively if not completely by heart and then go from there and i think it sets you up for success with the shuttle you were on your back for almost four hours waiting to launch so part of it was just let's get this over with and get going but then when the when the engines light it it you know you are going and you know you're going somewhere pretty fast and you go from in the case to the shuttle you go from three g's to zero g's instantaneously and things start floating and i remember distinctly just thinking what just happened because eight and a half minutes ago i was on earth and now i'm in space and obviously with falcon 9 and dragon this will be the first time humans have ridden on the falcon 9 even though it's flown many many times you tend to pull more g's the first stage is pretty similar like shuttle we had about a two and a half minute first stage the difference is going to be with falcon 9 the engines you know you separate from that part of the rocket with the engines the first stage and so you get kind of a weightlessness there for or a lack of acceleration there for a split second or two so that part of it is going to be distinctly different we could experience somewhere on the order of four plus g's whereas shuttle we were limited to just 3gs i think our concentration has mostly been on you know the profile the the crew vehicle interface you know just how it how the dragon will work for crews going forward that's why we're going to do this flight now is to prove out what we think it will do ideally it will do exactly what we expect it to do the first simulator where we integrated the hawthorne mission control team and the houston mission control team was a huge moment to be able to just have the entire integrated team that's going to support us getting to and from space station talking together working through the challenges i think that was probably for me that the first big highlight and that wasn't that long ago it overwhelms you to think about how many people have in some way shape or form touch this program and this and this vehicle to get us to this point you know we obviously in a lot of ways are are the lucky ones that get to fly it but we certainly um not for one second take for granted the amount of effort that so many other people had to put into this to make it successful and you know we'll do our part to to make it successful and to and to get back here and celebrate with everybody in a few short months very excited yeah very excited [Music] so today is as much about uh bob and doug and the future of the space uh space program as it is a bit of an elegic look back at the uh the phase we just left behind um and that phase ended with uh the final flight of atlantis let's take a look at atlantis and uh how it got prepared for that final flight that ended the 130 flight space shuttle program start what the spacecraft hatch has now been officially closed we will get back to that atlantis footage in a moment um you can see the white room team um sealing the hatch uh it is a very painstaking process this is the doorway that separates uh the astronauts from the void once they get to space so you want no mistakes with this um hatches have a long history in nasa they have a very dark history with a hatch that would not open during the apollo 1 fire um and so if there is any part of the spacecraft that has gotten special attention since that tragedy in 1967 it is the hatch the doorway that separates the astronauts from uh their internal world to the external world um this crew this uh white room crew will not leave this spacecraft until they are absolutely assured that the hatch is sealed and closed and that it is crew-worthy and flight-worthy and it's starting to look as if they are satisfied with these preparations and will momentarily be backing away and allowing that swing arm to move back and now let's uh take a look at that uh that that look at the final flight of the shuttle atlantis and how it got ready uh for that uh that closeout voyage the final mission for america's space shuttle fleet began with the shuttle atlantis in this processing hangar [Music] the ship was there for weeks to check and recheck its millions of parts making sure the very last shuttle was ready to haul 14 tons of food equipment and supplies to the international space station once atlantis was announced fit to fly the next step in this final trip was the procedure known as rollover that began with atlantis being towed from its processing hanger to the vehicle assembly building following a path well worn by 134 other shuttle missions over 30 years of flying three photographers documented this process with time lapse pictures shot over the course of four days in all 15 cameras captured 120 000 images once inside the vehicle assembly building the country's largest building by volume east of the mississippi atlantis was lifted by a halter crane it was then attached to its giant solid fuel boosters and to its 15-story liquid fuel tank when that was completed the shuttle emerged to begin its six-hour slow crawl to the launch pad shuttle workers gathered by the hundreds to witness the space shuttle's final rollout and with good and sentimental reason 355 humans flew over the course of 135 shuttle missions from 1981 through 2011. the shuttle's secret was in some ways its very lack of glamour it was a reusable workhorse ship that got humans and equipment to and from space and in so doing helped ensure america's future off the planet this launch of two astronauts aboard a spacex rocket the first such launch from american soil since atlantis flight is the next big step in that future [Music] and once again we are getting a look at the swing arm that will soon be coming pulling away from the spacecraft leaving bob and doug there alone at the top of the rocket with their support team um finally separated from them uh you can see here that uh there's a bit of a rain squall it's a little bit hard to make out the rainfall itself but it's not at all hard to make out the um the gray skies so there could be a few problems there um as you can see we're back in the white room now and this hatch is getting still more attention um although it's looking like these uh touch pads are being used to check off those final uh milestones uh and it looks like this crew is getting ready to leave the white room at long last and let that swing arm come back uh while we're waiting for the uh for the swing arm to come back um a big future part of the future of the space program obviously does involve elon musk and uh i had an opportunity to talk to him uh sometime last year uh let's see a little bit of that conversation we had at the spacex headquarters in hawthorne california i think apollo 11 landing on the moon was probably the most inspiring thing in history arguably the most inspiring thing this level of inspiration that that provided to the people of earth was incredible and it certainly inspired me i kept expecting that we would continue beyond apollo 11 that we would have a base on the moon that we would be sending people to mars but the united states has been without the ability to send people to low earth orbit since 2011 when the shuttle retired we need to advance space beyond what has been done before and that we need to send people to mars expand our horizons you know to do more in 2002 elon musk founded spacex we have liftoff breaking the stranglehold that governments had had as the exclusive providers for access to space ignition confirmed when musk couldn't lease facilities to launch his rockets from the continental united states he moved a team of engineers to a small a toll in the marshall islands despite early failures spacex eventually found success in 2010 it became the first non-governmental organization to launch orbit and successfully recover a spacecraft and in 2011 it was awarded its first nasa contract as part of the commercial crew program i thought starting spacex would be 90 likely to fail the cost of of access to space was just too high even if we doubled nasa's budget unless nasa had good options for for rocket contractors they would still not make progress so i actually just funded the whole company in the beginning myself not because i thought it would turn out well because i thought it would fail elon musk's sheer brazenness his willingness to break old molds and make bold promises has captivated space fans giving the company and its founders something of the popular following once enjoyed by steve jobs and apple and it's not just image the company does things differently relanding spent first stages on ocean barges building its massive stainless steel starship rocket adding technological prowess to its popular sizzle the holy grail of access to space is a fully reusable orbital rocket we cannot have a base on the moon we cannot have a city on mars we cannot become a multi-planet species without full and rapid reusability and we've made significant progress towards reusability with the reuse of the the falcon 9 boost stage that that's somewhere around two-thirds of the cost of launch maybe maybe 70 percent and and and we've just recently been successful in catching the fairing the the nose cone of the rocket and that is a crazy exercise with a boat that's basically a giant catcher's mitt and the boat adjusts course automatically and and that the two just you know maneuver to to touch each other [Music] while spacex is pushing the limits of rocket technology it has also had some setbacks a crew dragon spacecraft exploded during a test in 2019 the upcoming launch of a crew to the international space station is years behind schedule any new development process especially for something as complicated as a spaceship you know that can safely fly crew the important focus for nasa is doing it safely doing it right you learn many times the most from the failures and the tests that don't go the way that you expect them to so the incident with the crew dragon last year you know testing the escape system on the ground having an anomaly and then going back and looking through the design making sure that we fully understood everything that happened and and really you know upgraded the design to make sure that something like that could never happen again and be as safe as possible from beginning to end and it really culminated in that successful in-flight abort test earlier this year and there you just saw the trunk jettison again but the falcon 9 that will launch this week is now considered a reliable machine with a proven record that does not say there's no risk the rocket will use the so-called load and go approach before launch with the fuel tanks being filled after the astronauts have boarded the spacecraft this improves rocket performance given the dense supercooled fuel that's used but it's never been tried before with astronauts aboard and there will be some tense moments leading up to the launch the nasa team really took you know a strong look at all of the pros and cons of all the different ways to do that timing between crew integration and ingress and vehicle loading and launch and they really came together and and determined that this was the the right best approach to go do for this vehicle spacex represents a big part of nasa's future but it also has a lyrical link to the past one of the sweetest spots in all the world for people who love space is pad 39a the best pad best pad i mean apollo 11 left from there yeah virtually all of the lunar landing and orbital missions left from there and i can't believe we got to use this patch and that's my question insane on earth what is that like that is spacex's least pad now we're not worthy while this launch will be historic musk has his eyes on the future too already building a new rocket dubbed starship capable of taking humans to the moon and even mars this flight marks an important first step toward those grander journeys to come oh we're getting a live shot here of the scene at uh cape canaveral and uh if you are not seeing the launch pad clearly that's because the weather conditions have conspired once again against this launch now we are still two hours out from launch close to two hours a minute 58 and 14 seconds um and florida weather can be fickle stuff it could clear and cloud up and clear and cloud up again a couple of times in the next two hours uh but at the moment these are not conditions in which um any prudent uh flight director would launch a spacecraft um what we're hearing from times reporters on the ground is the word torrential to describe the downpour so at the moment we uh so far there's no launch there's no countdown hold there can't be a countdown hold today because uh there is an instant instantaneous launch window at 322 so the clock will keep running and the spacecraft uh the rocket either will or will not get off the ground at 3 22 pm uh at the moment if this weather holds it will not get off the pad but once again we rely on the very volatility and fickleness of florida weather to perhaps clear up for us in the meantime um uh that is the very short-term future of space exploration what's gonna happen in the next two hours uh let's take a look at something of the longer view uh what the future of space space exploration is going to look like after this flight does get off the ground at some point uh in the next uh over the course of the next uh couple of years and decades even as nasa and the rest of the world await this week's launch of two astronauts to the international space station aboard a spacex falcon 9 rocket the space agency itself has its eyes trained deeper into space much deeper the entire purpose of the commercial crew program was not just to open up space travel to the private sector it was also to allow the agency to devote its human exploration energy to returning astronauts to the surface of the moon and later to mars we're going to mars and in order to go to mars we have to use the moon as a proving ground we need to get to mars that's our our driving ambition as an agency and as humanity as far as exploration this has been on the minds of many people for generations and generations the new lunar program named artemis after the sister of apollo aims to have the first woman and the next man on the surface of the moon no later than 2024 the plan is an ambitious one but with a lot of work and a few breaks the goal can be met long in development and now nearing completion is the rocket that will be used for the missions nasa's prosaically named space launch system or sls the 21st century's answer to the 20th century's saturn 5. initial versions of the sls will stand taller than a 32 story building later iterations will top out at 38 stories either one will be more than capable of setting crews off on a deep space journey the sls rocket the biggest rocket that's ever been built in history taller than the statue of liberty it's on the five yard line and we're going to punch it into the end zone if we're going to land in 2024 which we're going to do the key is going to be sls also nearly ready for flight is the orion crew vehicle an exceedingly souped-up version of the old apollo spacecraft able to carry as many as six crew members compared to apollo's three the first flight could take place as soon as 2021 welcome inside the orion trainer right now i'd say crew members are over here two or three days out of the week doing different tests one of the neatest things about the orion spacecraft in general is that this is designed to take us to mars and so this spacecraft is designed to be operated autonomously by the crew so when we are on our way out to mars there's going to be minutes of comm delay back to houston and we have to make all the decisions in here it's really amazing it's an impressive vehicle in order to land on the moon nasa needs a new lunar lander and on april 30th the space agency selected three companies spacex blue origin and dinetics to begin the work of developing one the early blueprints from all of the companies are promising and the competition will be bracing with only one company emerging as the final builder nasa's goal for this generation of lunar landings is not to repeat the short visits of the apollo missions the so-called flags and footprints model but rather to go to the moon to stay i don't want to give any specific dates i don't want to make any announcements but if we're going to land in 2024 we've got to select quickly the goal is to lead a coalition of nations to have a sustainable presence at the moon with more access to more parts of the moon than ever before we learned that there's hundreds of millions of tons of water ice at the south pole of the moon what does that mean water ice represents air to breathe it represents water to drink it represents rocket fuel we are going to mars the moon is a waypoint it's the place where we learn how to live and work we learn how to make it sustainable only by learning how to live off the land in a long-term encampment just a three-day flight from home can america be sure it's ready to take the next great step to send astronauts to mars after half a century of staying close to home in low earth orbit human beings will once again look deeper into space and will follow to the places that cosmic gaze leads them well as you can see from this shot the weather has only deteriorated further there is no word yet from nasa on whether this flight would scrub early if the weather conditions seemed absolutely hopeless or whether they will continue counting down straight to that three 3 3 22 p.m mark one of the determining factors will be uh the load and go fuel they have not yet begun fueling this rocket that's a a complicated process it's entirely possible that if the weather continues to deteriorate uh they'll decide it's not worth even going through that and the launch would get scrubbed early and the crew would emerge early um but uh the bedding um here and the bedding in uh canaveral at the moment is no matter what we will go right up to that 3 22 pm mark and the spacecraft either will or will not lift off whatever happens today uh on the launch pad what happened before the crew got to the launch pad is part of a long history of space space flight traditions uh astronauts are not necessarily necessarily superstitious by nature but they are creatures of habit uh the first big moment in any astronauts day has always been the pre-flight breakfast uh typically steak and eggs uh that was neil armstrong buzz aldrin and michael collins uh having their pre-flight breakfast pre-apollo 11. what we saw a moment ago was the traditional tree planting at the baikonur cosmodrome in kazakhstan where each new astronaut who goes aloft will plant a tree the plush toy we saw floating in the spacecraft a moment earlier is another tradition astronauts will often bring along a toy of some kind not simply as a comfort object but so they have something that will float when they reach zero g remember they're strapped into their seats they can't float out so when you see the plush toy beginning to fly you know that you are in orbit here we see bob and doug continuing with their other tradition the new tradition of signing the walls of the white room before they take off and one of the oldest traditions and perhaps one of the uh one of the least dignified of the traditions is one begun by yuri gagarin uh the first human being in space on his way to the launch pad he realized that he must have consumed a little bit too much coffee um on his way to the pad so he stepped out of his uh out of the van and uh opened his spacesuit and relieved himself against the tire of the van taking him to the launch pad ever since then astronauts and cosmonauts leaving from the baikonur cosmodrome will stop on their way to the pad and have a similar self-relieving ceremony it's not the most dignified but it is one of the most enduring of space flight traditions me and i am being told that we have one small error to correct here um bob and doug signing the wall of the white room is not a new tradition this in fact has been going on for decades of flights uh uh including the space shuttle and other crews before them this is simply the continuation of a long-standing tradition this time though in a brand new white room with a brand new spacecraft pad 39a the launch pad from which the astronauts will leave for space today if the weather permits is one of the most historic spots in the history of the space program elon musk as you saw earlier sees it almost as hallowed ground as do a lot of people uh it is the launch pad from which virtually all of the apollo lunar missions flew uh as well as uh all 135 of their shuttle missions let's take a look at the history of pad 39a and how it came to be [Music] altitude [Music] [Music] why some say the moon why choose this as our goal and they may well ask why climb the highest mountain [Music] so get down [Music] nine eight seven six five all three engines up and burning two one zero and liftoff the final liftoff of atlantis on the shoulders of the space shuttle america will continue the dream atlantis [Music] [Music] so [Music] let's take a look back at some of the history that came before today uh the great apollo program of course was the one that took human beings to the moon there were 11 apollo launches from apollo 7 to apollo 17 and nine of them went to the lunar surface um or went to at least around the moon and then on to the lunar surface some of the great men and women of uh space history worked in that room uh jean crans glenn lunny chris craft all of the giants of the space program the rockets that launched from pad 39a during the apollo program were the largest rockets ever built uh if you had been able to harness the power of that rocket taking off it would have been the equivalent of running every river in america through a single hydroelectric turbine uh at the same moment that was the kind of energy that was used to get these rockets off the ground and into deep space um the uh true the technology used was of course primitive by today's standards this was slide rule technology this was pencil technology this was mental math technology and yet it got these spacecraft to the lunar surface um the touchdown on the moon that was achieved here on apollo 11 on july 20th 1969 was the culmination of a promise president kennedy made nine years earlier eight years earlier when he simply declared that we choose to go to the moon we don't have to go to the moon we choose to do this because we are a space faring people we are a questing people we are people who look at what's on one mountain and decide we have to get to the other mountain we are people who look at one coast of an ocean and decide we have to get to the other side of that ocean in order to explore the it was all it all began with these seven men the original mercury astronauts six of the seven flew uh one didn't uh because of a an early heart murmur um what they went through to be qualified was not easy stuff from the mercury program the one-man spacecraft uh the very first launch was right here you see it on a redstone rocket it was a little pop gun suborbital flight it's a tiny rocket this spacecraft carrying alan shepard did not go into orbit it went into what was called a sub-orbital flight he had about five minutes above the atmosphere about five minutes of weightlessness but that was enough for america to have said it had put men in space or it had put a man in space there was a second suborbital uh flown by gus grissom shortly after uh al shephard's flight um the crowds that gathered to watch these launches were a sign of what this meant to the united states this wasn't just a technological achievement this was a geopolitical achievement this was the united states in a bipolar world with uh the post-war capitalist american system on one end and the communist system on the other and it was very much seen as a war of two ideologies this uh what we're looking at here was views of john glenn the first american to orbit the earth on february 20th 1962. this one-man mercury program led to the two-man gemini program um this was the uh program that allowed astronauts to test the technologies they would need to get to the moon rendezvous docking um spacewalks long duration spaceflights the gemini 7 crew jim lovell and frank borman spent two weeks sealed in a gemini spacecraft right here what we're looking at is the rendezvous between the gemini 6 and gemini 7 spacecraft the very first time two spacecraft met in orbit that was considered an almost impossible feat to achieve spacewalking in its early iterations was not a safe thing to do if we are looking at gene cernan here and it's hard to tell uh this was the jet could be the germany nine spacewalk in which gene cernan labeled the spacewalk from hell um he overheated he could not see in his uh spacesuit uh his helmet advisor clouded up but it was one way of learning what spacewalking involved and that it wasn't simply the happy drift that people thought it was going forward of course beginning in 1981 was the shuttle program this was the point at which the u.s decided that we were going to uh make a long-term commitment to low-earth orbit which sounded less swashbuckling than the space shuttle or then the apollo programs but this was our chance to make to live in space this was the the space shuttle was equal parts elegant and wonderfully simple it was a space truck it ran as it said shuttle runs to and from earth orbit to bring crews up to bring hardware up uh it launched some of the greatest uh spacecraft in history the um the galileo probe uh that orbited jupiter left from the body of a space shuttle uh the hubble space telescope left from the body of a space shuttle um 135 such missions made space flight routine uh since the grounding of the space shuttle we have been a nation that has been has flown to space with the aid of the russians aboard the russian soyuz spacecraft the soyuz has been flying since 1966 it's sort of the volkswagen beetle of the space program it's tough it's reliable it's all but indestructible it is a speedy cosmic sports car and it's a heck of a machine going up and a heck of a ride coming down scott kelly who spent a year in space uh said that landing uh in a soyuz spacecraft is a little bit like going over niagara falls in a barrel that's on fire and yet uh here we see uh christina koch coming back from space uh after having spent nearly a year in space what we are looking at here appears to be an early iteration of the uh constellation the aries five this is a simulation of the uh what was going to be uh america's return to the moon program it was begun in 19 in 2004 by the george w bush administration and the goal was to have human boots back on the moon as early as 2015 if there was it was going to consist of two boosters one uh that was a relatively small booster the ares one to take uh astronauts to space and another the aries 5 which would take crew which would take cargo rather this was a launch of the ares one the very first iteration of the very first of the constellation programs and here again are simulations of what the the lunar vehicle would have been the constellation program fell victim unfortunately to what often happens in washington which is that as administrations change so too do goals the constellation program had gotten rather far along when the bush administration uh transitioned to the obama administration and the obama administration then decided to focus less on a return to the moon and more to the commercial crew program with the commercial sector uh the boeing starliner and the spacex dragon uh taking over the work of getting astronauts to and from low earth orbit so that the uh space agency the space program so that nasa could focus on deep space exploration and this is where we stand now with the commercial crew program uh taking care of low earth orbit and nasa looking forward to returning to the moon with both the artemis program and the new lunar lander being developed for the artemis program three companies have now been chosen to build that lunar lander blue origin which is the company owned by amazon founder jeff bezos spacex and dianetics and all three of them are working on building building a lunar lander meantime what we're looking at here is the new shepard rocket that blue origin hopes to use to send paying customers into into suborbital space very much like alan shepard's um very first flight into space uh here we're seeing the virgin galactic spacecraft similarly sir richard branson's virgin galactic company hopes to launch paying customers on suborbital flights that will give them about five minutes of weightlessness above the atmosphere um ultimately elon musk and what the images we're seeing here hopes to launch his 150 foot tall stainless steel starship rocket on the surface of the moon um this looks improbable but nasa believes enough in this that this is one of space spacex is one of the companies that's gotten a contract to help develop a lunar lander this is uh musk's next great enterprise and starship is uh where he hopes to make his mark landing both on the surface of the moon and ultimately on mars we're back now to a live picture of the pad and it looks like things may have cleared up a little bit we will see what nasa has to tell us uh about where the weather stands but the sky looks a bit bluer the rain looks uh a bit subdued and there is still a chance that we could be getting off the ground today at 3 22 pm we are like the rest of the world watching this this impending liftoff today um waiting for what nasa reports will be a weather update weather will be the final determinant as we can see from this angle it does appear that the skies are clearing now those are some pretty formidable clouds through which the spacecraft would have to launch but those are some pretty promising blue patches among the clouds and the better news is the sky appears the air appears generally clearer generally less cloudy less foggy and generally less rainy so we are standing by for a weather update from nasa which we are told will be coming momentarily [Music] so so we are here with terry verts the veteran of two space flights uh two weeks uh aboard uh one space shuttle mission helping to build the international space station and then days aboard the space station involving three spacewalks uh one stint as commander of the station a trip uh you made by sawyers uh the russian soyuz rocket so you're a veteran of two very different kind of spacecraft the space shuttle which is just a big bruiser of a machine and sort of a sports car like the soyuz what do you think it would be like to fly the uh crew dragon well i think it's gonna be a lot more like the soyuz it's roughly the same size uh the i noticed when i flew on the space shuttle it was like a muscle car it was rumbling and lots of noise and it kind of slowly takes its time getting into space it's similar to a saturn v in terms of weight and thrust whereas the soyuz was bam and you're just up and gone of course it was a nuclear icbm a soviet icbm so they didn't want those things to sit around and look pretty they wanted them to get going quickly so the falcon is going to be a lot more like the soyuz all credit to them if this launch goes off as as we hope it will but they are several years behind schedule and the us has been nine years now without the ability to uh get astronauts to to space on our own spacecraft we're used to thinking of going to low-earth orbit is fairly routine uh why is it taken so long why is it so hard to get spacecraft into orbit well the easy answer is space is hard and takes time and you have to uh you know work on all the technical things but the reality is between john glenn's or alan shepard's first flight and neil and buzz on the moon that was eight and a half years and people you know there were no cell phones to help do email and we didn't have any history so we were quicker in the 60s than we are today and this is spacex which is probably one of the fastest rocket companies ever i mean they get stuff done quickly right um part of the problem happened where congress just underfunded the program which takes some of the air out of the this is a privately funded thing because it was really a government-funded project and when the government didn't fund it by the full amount uh that really slowed it down part of it is you know there are problems that happened and there's been several you know serious technical problems along the way um but i when i was in space the spacex cargo capsule showed up a couple times and brought my underwear and food and supplies and um that program happened really really quickly it was basically i think 2008 when that when the cargo contract was really going and by 2012 they were delivering stuff to the space station so spacex has shown it can get stuff done much more quickly than the old government model but uh there's still it's still not a perfect system and it's still taking us longer in the 2010s than it did in the 1960s there's another competitor in this race of course boeing and boeing's spacecraft is it's cst 100 starliner which also will be carrying astronauts to and from the international space station now they had a bit of a setback on their last uncrewed mission uh they weren't quite able to reach the international space station what do you think about boeing's chances for uh getting their own crews out there and how quickly do you think they'll be able to be flying well i think boeing is going to do this also it's going to take them they're many months away you know this is not going to happen next month for boeing it's going to take some time before they do it they had software problems and when i was a test pilot i mostly worked on software programs and i would always tease the engineers it's only software guys come on you should be able to get this done and the reality is software is often the hardest longest most complicated you know part of any aerospace program but let me i'll ask you this question jeff um do you do you want to check your myspace account later on today the reality is myspace was the first to market right but now everybody does facebook right so just the fact that you're the first to market is sometimes good and sometimes it's irrelevant so boeing is definitely a a player in this in this market if you will you know that the iss program is a pretty small market it's only one or two launches a year for each company it's really not a big program so the real market place is going to be if we ever get to a place where there's private uh space stations like the bigelow space station or if we ever start legitimately manufacturing in space then companies like spacex and boeing and maybe others eventually sierra nevada or who knows um then they'll then they'll be launching four or five ten capsules a year and not just one a year and then it becomes interesting so the government is kind of seeding that market but hopefully it will eventually grow into something bigger and if it grows into something bigger if we do have private space stations in orbit um being serviced by private spacecraft uh will they be vacation will they be academic will they be industrial will they be all of the above i think the space station has a corner on the academic market you know it's a government subsidized thing that's the place for universities or companies to do research the space station is the place for science projects but it's not a place for manufacturing so if we ever figure out how to do 3d printing of human organs or make microelectronics and mass scale that you can make them better in weightlessness than you can on earth if any of those technologies actually hit then that's going to have to go to the bigelow or you know another private uh space so that's one of the markets is manufacturing and i think that tourism is also a very interesting idea there's several you know space tourist companies if you will virgin and blue origin are probably going to fly towards first maybe this year maybe next year but those are both those are just suborbitals they go up and come down five minutes later to have orbital space tourism would be amazing um but that's going to require a place like the iss that's not exactly set up for tourists it's a it's a government thing so i think that that would be a really interesting marketplace of course it's going to be probably more expensive than a retired astronaut or a journalist would be able to afford yeah i have a feeling i'll just be looking at someone else's vacation photos they're family movies exactly um elon musk is a character i think then musk himself would admit that he's a bit of a character um and there have been there's been some friction between him and nasa administrator jim bridenstine um in the last year or so um are you troubled by that or do you just see it as sort of the rough-and-tumble of of the space business i'm not trouble i thought you're going to say there's been some friction between him and everyone um this is the world that we live in um i i'm i'm a lot more troubled or excited by a rocket that works or doesn't work than i am about you know some tweets going off uh elon has admitted that he's the kind of the king of self-inflicted wounds if i was a shareholder i might want my ceo to you know be more uh focused on shareholder value and not on you know twitter um but uh that's between him and his shareholders so uh the the things that concern me as an astronaut if i were flying and i'm not i'm retired i i don't work at nasa and you know i'm done um is the rocket gonna work uh is the escape engine gonna work will the parachutes work will the rendezvous system work is the software gonna are the computers gonna work all that that's the stuff that really would concern me and that's where i think having some transparency and making sure that you're you're just being open and honest with the public is more important some of this other stuff is just showmanship i think right now before we uh went live here um you and i were talking a little bit about the difference between flying say a sawyers and flying the new spacex crew dragon and certainly no slur on bob benkin or doug early the astronauts who will be aboard the crew dragon but you said that there is a bit less flying going on with this spacecraft than there is when you're at the stick of uh of a soyuz or a space shuttle tell me a bit about that how come right so actually the details of it are proprietary and i i've never worked at spacex or that wasn't my job back when i was at nasa so i i don't know all the details but from what i understand there's basically no flying involved that everything is automated from the launch to on-orbit maneuvering the docking is automated during entry there's nothing for the crew to do the capsule does everything there's not from what i understand there's not even like a control stick that you normally have to fly an airplane or a spaceship um they are going to do some manual maneuvering during docking just to prove that the system works because this is a test flight so but it's like a it's a touch pad so they're going to have a screen and they'll be you know roll left and then the shuttle roll left and then pitch up and the capsule will pitch up flying on the space shuttle you know is designed in the 70s it was the best flying machine of all time it was and you could fly it you know during launch i i did fly it in orbit i flew um you know rendezvous and i flew around the space station with the control stick and back in the atmosphere i flew it with a control stick and like an airplane so the shuttle from a test pilot's point of view there will never be anything as cool as the space shuttle because you could really fly the thing but a new era it's the 2020s and you know we're going to have self-driving cars i think by the end of the century you know our grandkids are going to think back and hey grandpa what was it like to have a car that you had you know this is just the way of things the goal of this is not to fly it the goal of this is to take people from earth to the space station and back it's right just a logistical cog in the space station program as you mentioned we've been doing this since john glenn and yuri gagarin in their early 60s and right this is just a more modern version of that and this is not the goal like i said we got to get people into space the goal is what they do after they get the space that's the interesting part of it so this is kind of the it's the rental car at the airport it's not your vacation destination we're talking about 2024 uh to have boots on the moon the first woman and the next man um in candor um are you sanguine about that do you think uh we can we can make that date well uh the commercial crew program if you will was really born in 2009 when the obama administration took over and uh charlie and laurie garver kind of ran the space agency um they announced constellation was canceled the week i launched in space in 2010 and here it is 2020. so that's a decade yeah and we still haven't sent people just to earth orbit in a capsule right so and we're going to be on the moon in four years so i just as a realistic person that doesn't seem realistic at all uh however in the 60s we did do that right we were able to make it happen yeah but the it's not you know it's not the 1960s nasa today so that's going to be something that's going to be very difficult i think we also need to say you know why are we doing that and i think if it's part of a strategic plan to use the moon as a testing ground to get to mars if it were part of a a truly strategic plan then you do the things you need to do to you know fulfill that strategic plan rather than just say here's a random thing and we have to do it the other thing is the the debt that we're racking up right now jeff is staggering and it's it's just changed the course of you know the next decade or two what's happening in 2020 so we're gonna have to be very strategic about money that we spend right uh so i think there's just a new reality that we're in right and that brings us to the always somewhat touchy uh area of politics um for our viewers you mentioned constellation which was of course the lunar exploration program that was established under the george w bush administration and there was a fair amount of progress a good amount of progress that was made on that um and then it was cancelled under the obama obama administration and the obama administration had a number of its own policies including the asteroid redirect mission moving an asteroid closer to earth and then in studying it now under the trump administration we are back on a lunar course um do you worry that whatever happens in november the trump administration will either end then or it will end in four years that's not much time either way right do you worry that we will once again shift course and start all over and have a new program that will have to be begun from scratch right uh one of the things while i was an astronaut you fly and then you go visit congress and the white house i've been there several times and now that i'm retired from being an astronaut i've spoken at the national space council the vice president i talk to folks often and the one message i always have for them is it's not about the rocket science it's about the political science um and unless you and the way to run a space program is not change what the last guy did because you don't like him and that's what we've been doing now for more than a decade so the political system's broken in so many ways nasa is just one percent of a really messed up political system right right so i think the hope for me is that private companies can put together a plan i think if we can figure out how to do private public partnerships right and i know mr breinstein's been really focused on that and i know this is a priority for them but you know let blue origin just let them go uh let spacex go let sierra nevada go let these other companies and boeing and lockheed they have they can do things privately and when they are allowed to do that they can be more efficient too so i think if we can figure out how to let these companies do things um and let the government do things like make treaties you know bring in russia bring in europe bring in other countries to work uh eventually we're to need nuclear power government's going to have to do that spacex is not going to make the nuclear reactor so yeah i think if we figure out how to do that right that can help us moderate attenuate some of this political ups and downs that we have because otherwise it's never going to happen and sls you know that rocket really was born in 2005 when george w gave his vision for space exploration right it was going to use cheaper engines it was going to be they weren't going to have a capsule on it it was going to just be the cargo ship it was part of an integrated plan yeah and then that got canceled and changed and that was 15 years ago and it's still years and years away from watching people so yeah i remember at the time in 2005 when it was announced the target date was footprints on the moon maybe as early as 2015. well that's five years ago we're still not back in low earth orbit i was i think aerospace magazine did an article i was one of the next astronauts on the moon i was one of the guys they featured i think megan banken and karen nyberg actually yeah those wives i think they were in there too would you suit back up to go to the hood you know what to go to the moon yes of course one i had this do i stay or leave uh calculus that i went through at nasa and i had kind of done everything there was to do i was the station commander and shuttle pilot and blah blah blah so there's other things i want to do in life but i always said if i could go make a film in space i would that's something i would like to do yeah yeah well now there's talk of that happening there's talk about who's shooting aboard the international space station so maybe you can co-star with tom cruise well is there anything else that i have neglected to ask you that you think our viewers would want to know about what the stakes are this week and what it feels like to be bob banking and dunkirk doug hurley climbing into this machine i can say that when i flew on both of my flights it was really exciting the very first time i suited up for my first flight it ended up being canceled for weather and we launched again the next day and that first time i was it was like i was out of my element i was nervous i was in this big suit even though i practiced it it really was kind of okay this is something different but the second night i went out i felt a lot more comfortable and it was almost like i'd already done it even though i hadn't so then the nerves were better that second time bob and doug aren't going to have that because they've both flown you know they've flown several shuttle missions it's been a decade since they flown yeah but uh i don't think that's going to be a problem also on my first flight my first two days were miserable i had the worst headache of my life i was taking ibuprofen and it was on my third morning i remember steve robinson said hey how are you feeling and i was like god i feel like crap and then literally a few minutes later it was like a light switch and all of a sudden i was fine and then i was fine the rest of the time uh on my second flight even though it was four or five years later i felt fine like my your body just needs a couple days to figure out what the heck just happened right your inner ear fluids and everything yeah for some reason your brain figures it out and at least for my case i've heard others say the same thing um you know they would i felt okay and so my guess is that they're gonna feel okay because they this isn't their first space flight right you told me something once speaking about um uh space walking about what it's like to walk and step out into that void and every one of your rational brain cells tells you that you cannot fall you are in orbit physics is keeping you up there right look down and there's nothing below you but a planet 250 miles below you describe that experience a little bit so on my first spacewalk uh when i went outside it was it was time on earth but the sun the station was up in the sunlight right so that actually helped because when it's daytime on earth you see the earth going by and i several of my colleagues had said man i got vertigo when i went outside i didn't think i would but i wasn't sure because it was my first time so i went outside the very first thing i did i took there's a waste tether on the side i pulled it off i clipped it on a handrail and i let go so i was in out there i was in outer space floating above earth and i just looked down i looked around and went okay i'm fine i just wanted to make my brain behave and make sure it was okay yeah personally i don't like ledges um i hate stan i hate standing on the edge of a building or something like that and so whenever i'm on a bridge or on a building i always walk right over to the edge yeah just to force myself to do it because i don't like it it's almost like i'm just having to beat my brain into submission and yeah you know but i still feel i'm like if i'm gonna if i'm in a fighter jet flying upside down i'm fine because i'm strapped in and it's okay if i'm standing on a ledge so that was it that was my way to try and get my brain like as you so well described it every rational brain cell knows you're okay but it's the emotional brain spells that don't necessarily know that you've got a book coming out uh soon tell me a little bit about that i do well we both do but uh my my next book is going to be called how to astronaut it's a collection of 51 short essays uh the goal is to laugh and to say wow those are the two things that i hope to get by it um i wrote it myself no ghost writers and it's some basic stuff like how do you learn how to be a doctor how do you learn how to launch in a space shuttle uh it's some crazy stuff like what do you do if the engines don't light and you're stuck in orbit or what do you do with a dead body if your crewmate dies or uh you know are there aliens and so it's some stuff that is expected some stuff that's not expected uh you can pick it up and read it uh any chapter it doesn't have to go in order it's it's just a collection of essays and um i think it's going to be pretty fun it's a good beach read uh when you go to the beach this summer coming out september 15th so they've started doing pre-sales now terrific congratulations on that and thank you very much for spending time with us terry virts veteran of two space flights and former commander of the iss not bad thanks jeff looking forward to this launch thank you so much [Music] and welcome back uh for those of you who are just joining us we are now t minus one hour one minute and 40 seconds from launch we are awaiting a weather update from nasa at the moment the skies look clearer it appears that the torrential downpours of earlier in the day have ended the winds do not seem too challenging so the hope is that we will see that swing arm the access arm that connects the spacecraft to the gantry move back soon um there will be at 2 25 in about five minutes uh an air force one fly over carrying the president and the first lady who will be here to watch the launch and later to make some comments in the vehicle assembly building uh the vice president who was here yesterday will not be here or who was here on wednesday rather during the um the first attempted launch will not be here today president trump will not be the first astor the first president to watch a uh launch live though he will be one of the first the only other two were president nixon who in november of 1969 watched the apollo apollo 12 crew launch uh for the second lunar landing and much later in october of two of uh 1998 president clinton um watched john glenn on his great return to flight here in this shot we see former vice former president lyndon johnson and then vice president spiro agno at the launch of apollo 11 but president nixon who had been in office for just six months at that point had not did not attend he did as you can see uh attend the return of the crew he was on board the uss hornet when they were recovered and this you can see here uh president clinton and first lady hillary clinton um watching uh the uh the launch of senator glenn and here is president of michelle obama visiting the space station um or the space center earlier in the decade once again here is rollout footage um and for those uh folks who are joining us um on youtube uh here we have the presidential flyover uh air force one uh bringing the president and the first lady uh to the uh launch facility where they will watch uh the takeoff that we hope will be coming now in 58 minutes and 52 seconds for those of you who are joining us on youtube there is a comment section um in youtube we would love to answer any questions uh respond to any comments you have one question that came in from a viewer earlier earlier was how long it will take the astronauts to get to space and the remarkable thing is this is just a 12-minute ride from the surface of the earth in a 1g gravity sphere uh gravity well to low earth orbit in zero g uh the astronauts uh bob benkin and doug hurley will make that transition uh in just 12 minutes now we'll take them 19 more hours inside their spacecraft to catch up with the international space station uh but only 12 minutes to go from earth to orbit it is a hot fast sprint once those engines light these guys are truly hauling the mail the astronauts day uh is a complicated one um we're looking at some scenes here from wednesday when the uh when the the launch was scrubbed uh this is bob benkin and that's doug hurley and bob benkin uh being suited up in the same suit up room that was used in the apollo program and some of that equipment some of that uh that off-green equipment on the back wall is the original hardware that was used back then it's still being used now it's relatively simple stuff um you can see those old analog meters once the crew is suited up they are made ready to get to the launch pad um they are carrying as you can see the umbilicals here they have air conditioning systems uh since this these uh spacesuits are essentially self-contained uh spacecraft they need their own kind of coolant system we see here the two astronauts uh speaking to both elon musk and on the right and jim bridenstine the administrator of nasa on the left um these are the two men who are most responsible for what will happen today uh the walkout happened on wednesday very nominally this is how it's supposed to look uh a lot of waves and blown kisses to friends and family the backup crew is there with them as well typically backup crews are there until the very last moment always ready to be available in the event an astronaut would not fly here they were climbing into the gold wing tesla getting ready to go out to the launch pad saying goodbye to their wives and children again you notice they are standing behind a yellow line and it's only pantomime hugging going on here uh this was the case even before uh the covid pandemic uh astronauts have always been put into some kind of uh pre-flight quarantine uh to keep them from carrying any pathogens up to the international space station but particularly in uh in the age of covet we do not want this new virus making it uh making it off the ground and into space um one correction from earlier uh that was not today's air force one flyover that uh we showed you that was footage from wednesday apparently there will not be a flyover today the president and the first lady are coming in via air force one but there won't be the same kind of flyover for um for the press and the uh spectators um the crew plugged in uh their uh uh environmental control systems from their uh spacesuits into a similar environmental system in the tesla on the way out to the launch pad we are told they listened to a mixtape uh on the way out that included the blues brothers ac dc and the star-spangled banner to get them in the mood for uh this uh most american of missions the first uh time american astronauts will be launching aboard an american rocket from american soil since july of 2011. when the shuttle atlantis made the uh final trip to the uh into orbit uh it to service the international space station uh we are now at t minus 51 minutes and 55 seconds and we just got word from nasa that the escape system the rockets that would pull the spacecraft away from an exploding uh falcon 9 in the event of an emergency are being armed which is a good sign that means they are preparing for launch much more important the fueling that will take place about 30 minutes before launch loading on those 76 000 gallons of liquid oxygen and kerosene into the spacecraft or into the rocket rather are also on track to proceed on time so these are both good signs um again we are still close to an hour away weather can do a lot of funky things in an hour and we have no way of knowing uh with any certainty if this mission will get off on time but those are two very promising signs that they are going ahead with these two very important milestones uh arming the escape system and fueling the rocket in anticipation for launch to get into the white room which was the last place we saw them standing up before they climbed inside dragon and again a wider shot there of launch complex 39a where we are inside of an hour from liftoff and i think we're just a couple minutes away from the poll we're going to hear before they start propellant load again a two-stage rocket there and gosh you guys the weather looks it looks not that bad i mean obviously that is not an official forecast uh but it doesn't look quite as bad as it did wednesday we've got a little bit better odds so uh there's the countdown clockwork we're going to pause to listen to that calm we've gotten a number of questions from viewers about how we keep space coronavirus free um the uh an important lesson was learned in 1968 when uh the apollo 7 astronauts all caught head colds on a miserable 11 day mission uh covet is much more serious than a head cold but protocols that were put in place back then are still in place today to keep uh any spacecraft disease free so let's take a look at how space is being kept coveted free in this time of pandemic there's no better way to escape the coronavirus that's stalking the world than to leave the world all together astronauts bob benkin and doug hurley will be doing that when they take off aboard a crew dragon spacecraft for a flight to the international space station but before leaving they had to ensure they weren't carrying the virus aloft with them that meant quarantine or crew health stabilization as nasa calls it for decades nasa astronauts have quarantined before traveling to space but that's not the way it always was in the early days of the mercury and gemini programs the idea of isolating the one and two man crews before flight was considered ill-advised and even impossible there was just too much work for them to do to indulge any worries about colds and flus all of that changed after the flight of apollo 7 when astronauts wali sharad don isley and walt cunningham came down with severe head colds early in what turned out to be a miserable 11 days in space by the time of the apollo 8 lunar orbit mission a 21-day pre-flight quarantine protocol was put into place the crew was scheduled to launch december 21st 1968 which should have meant quarantining from december 1st on but president lyndon johnson had other ideas and on the evening of december 9th he held a dinner at the white house honoring the crew and the rest of nasa that meant a late start on quarantining with the 21 days cut to just 12. [Music] for the first three of the six successful lunar landing missions apollos 11 12 and 14 there was not only a pre-flight quarantine but three more weeks of isolation afterwards to ensure that the astronauts were not carrying any lunar pathogens back with them by the time of apollos 15 16 and 17 nasa reassured that lunar pathogens didn't exist in the first place lifted the post-flight part of the lockdown the three crews that flew to skylab america's first space station in the 1970s had a longer three-week pre-flight quarantine period in keeping with the longer stretch they'd be spending in space the shuttle crews got a break just a week of pre-flight quarantine three days spent at crew quarters at the johnson space center in houston and four spent in similar accommodations at the kennedy space center in florida with the coronavirus at large benken and hurley were assigned a longer 12-day quarantine period five days in home isolation and seven at cape canaveral they and the few technicians and medical personnel who have come into contact with them during quarantine were also required to have two negative coronavirus tests in order for the crew to be certified fit to fly where humans go at least some germs hitch a ride with us the key is to ensure as few as possible accompany us to space and here we are at last singing scene that swing arm moving away from the spacecraft uh bob benkin and doug hurley are now very much on their own with the exception of course of the tens of millions of people in the world watching their mission and the hundreds and even thousands of controllers on the ground around the country and around the world who are helping to keep them safe so in that sense they are not at all alone but physically they are there without their support team uh without their white room crew it's just two men in that spacecraft getting ready to take off yeah yes we are now at uh t minus 39 minutes and uh just seven seconds um we are awaiting a shot of uh the presidential motorcade uh the president and the first lady departed the white house at 12 10 p.m today and arrived at the shuttle landing facility at 2 25 just 20 minutes ago um so they will be moving over to the um operational support building next where they will be uh from which they'll be viewing the flight uh meantime the skies continue to clear the weather continues to look as if it is going to cooperate and it only needs to cooperate for another 38 minutes and 25 seconds after which florida is free to do what florida does which is for the weather to become turbulent again we just need this these skies these conditions to hold for now under 40 minutes uh and as we uh see this uh rocket and the spacecraft on the launch pad it's worth uh mentioning again um just how extraordinarily uh well designed and engineered the machines are the falcon 9 rocket itself stands 229 feet tall it's fueled by nine merlin engines using rp1 rocket fuel which sounds pretty glamorous except rp1 rocket fuel is pretty much just a high-intensity kerosene and that's mixed with liquid oxygen as the oxidizer each of the nine engines produces a hundred and twenty five thousand pounds of thrust for an overall 1.125 million pounds um the falcon 9 first flew on uh june 4th 2010. it's been an operational vehicle for a decade now this will be the 84th launch of a falcon 9 and significantly one of the things that uh distinguishes the falcon 9 from virtually every other actually every other expendable rocket that does fly is that when its first stage is spent it's not simply dumped in the ocean uh as a used once and throw throwaway piece of hardware instead the uh the first stage lands on a barge near the uh near the space center um and there have been so far 44 successful such landings and 31 of these first stages have been successfully refurbished and re-flown the dragon spacecraft itself that the astronauts will be flying in is sort of think of it as the apollo era spacecraft on steroids uh it's about as wide as the apollo was about 13 feet wide but it's twice the height at 26.7 feet tall it has significantly more habitable space than the apollo did which carried three men and something close to moderate comfort and moderate discomfort um this spacecraft is capable of carrying a crew of up to seven men and women um although there will only be uh two obviously this time um there are 16 thrusters right around the spacecraft that allow it to perform the delicate choreographic maneuvers it will need to perform in order to dock with the international space station to reorient itself for re-entry and to do all of the other maneuvering that is necessary during space flight there have been 22 launches of a dragon spacecraft the cargo version of a dragon so far and 21 visits to the international space station it is almost all automatic obviously the astronauts are highly trained in order to take over at any point the instrument panels are all touch screens very different from the mechanical toggle switches and dials of the old apollo era and the crew is perfectly capable eminently capable of flying the spacecraft on their own if any of the automatic systems uh fail to work when they come home they will land under the power of two small drogue parachutes and four main shoots the dragon uh like the first stage of the uh falcons uh falcon rocket is reusable this is all in an attempt uh to ensure that the um that prices can be kept down and assembly can be complete and what we just saw here what we're seeing here is a test of the escape system um that was conducted last year to prove that the dragon could successfully separate from a rocket that was threatening to explode so we're working with two reliable machines today two machines that have a very proven track record uh the one thing they have not done until uh today we hope is carry human beings uh and we are inside of 33 minutes now until the point at which that important milestone may at last be crossed the presidential motorcade is now approaching we should be able to see that soon the weather looks calm as you can see from the inset image on the left the sky is rather blue and as you can see in the top right corner that wind sock that orange windsock at the top of a light pole does not seem to be getting uh pushed by much wind at all so we have what appear from these decidedly non-scientific measures here um clear skies and low winds and this is what you would want to see the president and the motorcade should be arriving momentarily around this bend that we can see in the image here the president will view the launch um he will arrive just about eight minutes before launch time at 3 25 for the uh or rather at 3 17 for the 322 launch and we'll then go to the vehicle assembly building uh at 5 p.m to address uh to address nasa workers and a number of the people responsible for what we hope will be today's launch you see the motorcade arriving now this is part of a long tradition of presidents making sure that they are present either at launches or at recoveries in order there's politics involved certainly there is nothing wrong with doing the touchdown dance when um something uh momentous like this happens uh under your administration uh but also all presidents going back to president eisenhower who was the president who founded nasa have known that um space travel is as much about technology and exploration as it is about politics and funding and it's important for presidents for any administration to be there to wave the flag to show the colors to make it clear and that they are behind this enterprise traveling in space is expensive traveling in space is dangerous and it's important for presidents to show that they are in support of this program and that they are backing it and president trump is uh there very much today uh to enjoy uh what looks like it could be a successful launch which is now just 29 minutes and 15 seconds away and it appears as if fueling of the rocket has now begun you can see some of that condensation from the uh liquid oxygen that is part of the fuel mix subliming out of the spacecraft this is the first crude launch that it uses what is known as the load and go process uh typically the engine the rocket is fully fueled and only then does the crew climb aboard um that was considered a safer way to go um but with the design of the falcon 9 rocket the super cooled and highly condensed fuel cannot sit in the tanks uh too terribly long before it begins to lose its efficiency at least its efficiency within the system as it's designed for the falcon 9 and for that reason the fuel is kept in the tanks for as short a time as possible consider this a little bit like when horses load into the gate in uh any horse race horses will not tolerate a gate very long which means once they're there the race is about to begin uh fuel in this rocket will not tolerate lying idle in a tank terribly long that doesn't mean it's going to blow up it just means it's going to lose some of its um some of its energy potential um and for that reason once uh spacecraft once uh the fuel is in the rocket it is going to go the astronauts um boarded so long ago um hours ago now um which is uh very much a part of the process it takes a great deal of uh last minute work to get um environmental systems up uh to get crew checklists gone through to drill what the final maneuvers are going to be crews are very accustomed uh to spending time um flat on their backs in their spacecraft as doug hurley said in the earlier piece we saw in nasa for his shuttle flights he was accustomed to spending as much as four hours on his back one thing about fueling it's interesting to think we think of rockets as great machines that happen to be filled then with fuel much the way a car your car is you know 95 percent the weight of the vehicle and you add a few extra pounds when you fill your tank a rocket is quite a different thing a rocket is something like an egg with the shell as the rocket itself actually the lightest part of the entire assembly it's the fuel that weighs the most a saturn v rocket unfueled weighed about one and a half million pounds fully fueled it weighed six and a half million pounds so you had fuel weighing more than three times the weight of the rocket um think of a rocket an empty vessel that is a a machine that is used to process the fuel that fills it um the load and go process is underway now it should complete not long before launch it does not take all that long uh to pump even 76 000 gallons of fuel into a 229 foot machine um so with this fueling coming it means we are in the final stages uh just 24 minutes and 40 seconds now away from launch and we uh have a question from a viewer as to why uh the launch time is so precise why we have what's called an instantaneous launch you either launch a 322 or you don't launch at all why can't we push it 20 minutes uh in fact if you were launching into any old orbit with any old spacecraft you could do that it wouldn't make a terribly much difference but it's a very delicate ballet between uh the international space station which is in a 51 degree orbit relative to the equator uh at 250 miles above earth it's a very delicate dance between that spacecraft and the dragon which will have to launch from 28 degrees then quickly move to a 51 degree inclination and then orbit the earth 13 times in order to catch up with the space station essentially to intersect the orbit um think of it as a series of spirals the crew dragon will launch and it has to spiral out carefully until it reaches the space station's orbit if you launch even a second or two too early or too late you miss that uh intersection point so uh basically the crew dragon is aiming for where the space station will be 19 hours and a handful of minutes from right now and you cannot miss that launch by more than a second or two otherwise you will fall short of or fly wide of the space station and it's worth uh reminding ourselves and our [Music] uh it's worth uh reminding ourselves and our viewers um one last time uh about what spacex had to do to get to this point um this is a momentous day for the uh for for a private company launching astronauts launching nasa astronauts and they had to go through a great deal to ensure that their systems were reliable that their uh hardware was reliable and that they could get crews safely away from a rocket that was threatening to explode the two great tests that they had to go through were the so-called pad abort test when the uh spacecraft was on the launch pad and fired its escape engines to prove that it could get away from a rocket that was threatening to go awry and later a launch abort test in which a dragon crew vehicle was actually launched atop a falcon 9 rocket and the falcon 9 rocket was deliberately destroyed an instance before it was destroyed uh the dragon spacecraft was capable of firing its escape engines and taking the astronauts to safety in the event of any kind of such eventuality today and here we're looking now at this pad aboard test this was a test those engines that took that that uh that took that spacecraft off the ground would be the ones that would pull it away from a faulty rocket should uh any kind of accident occur uh it would separate from the service module uh and it would release its parachutes and the astronauts would then descend safely into the ocean this of course is one of the reasons also that uh cape canaveral uh is the place we from which we launch we launch east over the ocean which means that antioxidants uh with rockets uh will far fall harmlessly into the ocean and not toward population centers it's also the reason that russia which does not have the same access to the same kind of uh warm water coastline uh at a low out low latitude launches from baikonur which is uh very much uh desert here it looks like we're looking at the um launch aboard test uh in which a falcon 9 was launched and then deliberately destroyed uh let's see if that's indeed the footage we're watching um but this was one more test to prove that the spacecraft could get safely away from a rocket that was in distress and yes here we see the spacecraft separating under these circumstances the onboard systems would have sensed that the rocket was in trouble it would have gotten the astronauts away and that explosion of the rocket uh would have happened far behind where the astronauts were on earlier spacecraft the mercury and apollo spacecraft there were escape towers on the top of the spacecraft that would pull the spacecraft away from the from the rocket on the dragon uh there are escape rockets at the base of the uh dragon itself that push it away from a rocket in distress either way it keeps the astronauts safe stage two locks load started and we see to the left here a lot of dignitaries on the balcony of the osb building watching as the launch is about to take place uh there are astronauts here there are military folks here uh general john raymond uh the head of the uh newly launched uh space force is here um this is uh in lieu of the much more crowded viewing stands that uh would typically uh be uh the place from which launches were watched um but for the uh covid pandemic of course um looking at this balcony uh we're not seeing a whole lot of people wearing face masks we're not seeing a whole lot of people uh socially distancing um this coronavirus may not be the immediate news of today but um if this launch goes successfully um in 13 minutes and 14 seconds uh ignition will have happened uh 12 minutes afterwards the astronauts will be in orbit and then uh all of us will have to go back to our everyday lives which include the coronavirus this should not be meant to diminish the success of today but it is a reminder that we are about to achieve it looks like we're about to achieve may achieve something extraordinary in a time of uh extraordinary problems and the launch will be a pleasant break from that but it's a reminder also that we must continue to take the virus seriously and if you're just joining us we are uh now inside of 11 minutes to launch t-mon is 10 minutes and 54 seconds uh the rocket is fueled as you can see from the uh the vapor subliming off the side of the rocket that is the liquid oxygen uh that is the super cold liquid oxygen that is uh one of the two fuels that's used uh super um super cooled cryogenics uh liquid oxygen actually adds weight to a rocket not simply because of the weight of the fuel it actually causes the humid florida air to condense against the side of the rocket and form a thin ice shell the saturn v and the time it would sit on the launch pad used to gain about 1200 pounds just in ice forming on the side of the rocket there's probably a little bit of that happening on the falcon 9 rocket today the fueling is complete the astronauts are in what is effectively the terminal countdown now just awaiting ignition and awaiting for the precise moment when the international space station orbiting 250 miles above at about 17 150 miles an hour moves into precisely the right position for the um spacex falcon 9 rocket to light its engines and begin what will be a 19 hour chase between the two astronauts in the dragon and the station itself that will culminate tomorrow morning shortly before noon in a docking at the station it's been a huge honor know that we're with you have an amazing flight and enjoy those views of our beautiful planet thanks jay uh it is absolutely our honor to be part of this uh huge effort to get the united states back in the launch business uh we'll uh talk to you from orbit thank you all thanks for those words flight and enjoy those views of our beautiful planet starting tvc hydraulic press stage one and stage two engine chill has started engine hydraulics are pressure and on the viewing stand it's uh it's hard to see in the image we have but um president trump and uh vice president pence are both there along with um nasa administrator jim bridenstine it's unclear if elon musk had a spacex is with them but the president and vice president are present the first lady is there as well and jim bridenstine a former congressman um appointed as nasa administrator by president trump in 2017 replacing um previous administrator charlie bolden it is uh uh administrator bridenstine who has been charged now with the job of overseeing the commercial crew program as well as the much more ambitious artemis program uh which is intended to land the first woman and the next man on the surface of the moon in 2024 but today their minds are less on the moon and more on this immediate launch which is now inside of just four minutes away vehicle tanks pressing or strong back retract wrong fact retract has started stage two rv and bleed page 1 rpms afts final setup started and igniter purges logo bleed dragon has transitioned to terminal count and is on internal power stage one locks load close out vehicle is transitioning to internal power stage two lock float is closed out per pound fills are complete dragon is an auto idol brown gas closeout is starting falcon 9 is in startup dragon isn't countdown fts is armed for launch dragon spacex go for launch spacex dragon we're go for launch let's light this candle t-minus 30 seconds stage 1 tanks pressing for flight team is 15 seconds 10 9 8 seven six five four three two one zero ignition liftoff of the falcon 9 and crew dragon go nasa go spacex [Music] stage one propulsion is nominal falcon power and telemetry nominal m1d throttle down vehicle is supersonic and one do you throttle up max kill one bravo copy one bravo start of mvac engine chill m1d throttle down falcon stage separation confirmed copy two alpha m-vac ignition acquisition of signal waves stage two propulsion is nominal dragon spacex nominal trajectory and we have seen now the number nominal trajectory we've seen separation of the first stage booster which should now be on its way to recovery on the uh ocean barge uh for reuse on the left we're seeing a view inside the spacecraft to the right we're seeing looking back toward the end of the spacecraft the propulsion is still nominal the tail end of the spacecraft as that second stage engine continues propelling the astronauts to space uh they are in a much smaller and much lighter vehicle than they were when they left the ground uh the first stage is now gone um what is uh happening now is all about increasing acceleration uh the crew is going to feel a maximum of three g's on this uh flight which is uh not terrible to the average person that would be quite a lot the average 150 pound person would feel like he or she weighed 450 pounds but these uh astronauts are accustomed to eating eight and nine g's in a um in a simulator what we should be seeing on the right now is a scene from the first stage which is descending uh from midway toward space uh back toward the ocean uh that appears to be what we are seeing to the left is the view that you would see if you were behind uh bob benkin and doug hurley um looking toward the instrument panel and the windows in the front of the spacecraft the first stage on the right is in something close to controlled free fall now it will not reignite its engines for landing until it gets closer to the ground but attitude control thrusters along the flank of the uh booster keep it aligned and keep it uh keep it moving steady when you hear a nominal trajectory that is oh good news nominal in this case means exactly as you want it to be uh on the right you can see the thrusters now beginning to fire on that first stage as it uh as it slowly descends toward earth it is falling at a speed at this point of course that would not allow it to survive re-entry but it will propulsion is still good it will reignite its engines s2 propulsion as they just said that stage two propulsion uh that means the second stage nominal trajectory that means the second stage of the rocket is still um acquisition of signal new hampshire stage 2 fts was saved and now we can see those first stage engines have reignited as the first stage descends toward its landing barge it is just about to penetrate through the cloud tops and landing on the barge should be should be less than a minute away uh though it's a little hard to tell from this perspective it all depends on the uh the exact height of that cloud ceiling throttle step bobby shannon and back through our step and back shut down dragon spacex nominal orbital insertion launch escape system is disarmed dragon copy nominal orbital insertion those are some sweet words nominal orbital insertion the dragon spacecraft is in orbit uh unfortunately the signa then we are seeing on the left that not only is the dragon spacecraft in orbit but the first stage of the rocket has successfully landed signal newfoundland has successfully landed on the barge that is playfully named of course i still love you welcoming the first stage back the crew is in orbit the first stage is recovered the first launch from american soil in an american spacecraft with american astronauts since 2011 has now placed those astronauts in orbit signal wallops and at this point what we are seeing is a surprisingly controlled uh mission control room uh dragon separation and uh in hawthorne california where the flight controllers seem uh relatively calm given the enormity of what they've just uh accomplished uh separation of the lower stage of the uh second stage engine of the uh spacecraft is now complete the dragon is independently in spacex with that separation call we have a few words for you from our falcon 19. let's listen in on this dragon chief engineer on dragon the ground bob doug on behalf of the entire launch team thanks for flying with falcon 9 today we hope you enjoyed the ride and wish you a great mission hello congratulations to you in the f9 team for the first uh human ride for falcon 9 and it was incredible uh appreciate all the hard work and uh thanks for the great uh rides of space yeah proud of you guys and the rest of the team uh thank you so much for what you've done for us today putting america back into low earth orbit from the florida coast good luck godspeed so the work has been done the launch has been completed america is in progress america has rejoined the ranks of space nations launching from its own soil its own astronauts its own rockets uh we will be uh returning now to the nasa feed uh direct for about another 15 or so minutes um uh this is time magazine reporting from kennedy space center in florida and the time headquarters in new york city we have witnessed history today and we've witnessed a return to america as a leader in the world of space faring nations environmental control and life support system that's everything controlling their atmosphere just keeping dragon a nice safe habitable environment where they're going to be living for the next 19 hours until they arrive at the space station right exactly and falcon 9's job may be done for today but the mission is not over crew dragon's job is not done as you can see bob and doug are still inside crew dragon making their way it will be a 19-hour trip to the international space station before they dock tomorrow morning such cool views i love that we can get these live views here and see and watch what they're doing now that they are in orbit yeah it's it's incredible to just be looking over their shoulder to be along for the ride and we're going to be with them and we're going to be with all of you the entire way for their journey to the space station we're going to be covering live throughout bob and doug will obviously have a sleep period uh where they'll get about eight hours of sleep a little bit later today before they wake up for all of their final approach uh one of the major things we are looking forward to in the next couple of hours is going to be their first turn at the controls so they're actually going to be using those touchscreen displays to take control and manually pilot dragon we'll walk you through what that's going to look like and assuming we have some good ground station coverage we'll be able to get views from right inside dragon looking over their shoulder as they manipulate the controls at the display but i mean we had a a smooth ride uphill both stages of the falcon 9 doing their job placing bob and doug into orbit i mean this is this is a day this is a historical day this is us kicking off that new era of space flight that we've all been talking about and longing for since the space shuttle program came to an end in 2011. yeah and the weather the weather cooperated yes second time's a charm right all right so day for the history book books as you can see we have lost some live signal there but the mission still continues and we're going to send it over to ksc to continue broadcasting live you

Channel: TIME

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Id: 9NsbsLV6hX4

Length: 235min 48sec (14148 seconds)

Published: Sat May 30 2020