Original subtitles

Extracted By || Mr-MiKe ||

Narrator: American astronauts have not flown to space from u.S. Soil

in nearly 10 years.

That is about to change.

The united states is a nation of explorers.

It's something that fundamentally appeals

to our psyche.

Narrator: This is an experiment to see

if an innovative private company

such as spacex can fly nasa astronauts

and reinvigorate space exploration.

It's an honor to be not only representing nasa,

but spacex as well

in this next step of space exploration.

♪

Musk: The scary thing to be launching people, you know,

and risk is never zero.

Sometimes things do blow up.

Space is hard.

How do you manage telling your son

that you're facing that risk as you go forward?

Narrator: The second golden age of space travel begins now.

♪

♪

Man: T-minus three, two, one, zero.

Ignition.

♪

♪

♪

Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

♪

♪

We're able to get the moon in '69,

and that was only 66 years

from first flight from orville

and wilbur wright's first flight.

It was 1903. It was the first controlled powered flight.

Only 66 years later, landing on the moon.

That's incredible.

♪

♪

Even though it was only a few people that did it, vicariously,

we all went to the moon.

Humanity went to the moon,

and it was the greatest accomplishment

of human civilization.

♪

You know, but it's been now 51 years

since that first landing,

and no one has the ability to land on the moon.

Narrator: The apollo era ended in triumph

and nasa looked forward to a bright future

with its new program, the space shuttle.

♪

♪

However, after 30 years,

133 successful missions...

And two catastrophic disasters...

Man: Obviously a major malfunction.

Narrator: The space shuttle program ended in 2011.

Man: The space shuttle pulls into port for the last time.

Narrator: Nasa's days of flying people to space seem to be over.

They relied on russian soyuz rockets

to get astronauts to the space station.

If you'd asked for in '69 that were said by 2020,

we would have had no hotels on pluto.

They wouldn't have thought that in 2020

that the united states hadn't been able to send people

to orbit for nine years.

And so basically, we cannot be complacent

about technology development.

We have to really drive innovation hard.

♪

Narrator: Eight years later,

the head of nasa administrator jim bridenstine,

has traveled from washington, d.C.

To make an important announcement

about the future of space travel.

- Hey. Good to see you. - You, too.

You doing alright? Yeah.

Excellent.

He is joined by elon musk,

the visionary and at times controversial founder

and chief engineer of spacex.

This announcement is the result

of nasa's radical new partnership

with the private sector called the commercial crew program.

Thank you for coming to spacex today

in hawthorne, california.

The highest priority is launching american astronauts

on american rockets from american soil.

We are on the cusp of making that a reality.

There's a lot of negativity, you know,

especially these days, it would be great

to have something positive that perhaps can unite

the country or the world, and advancement in space

is one of those things.

That is the reason that spacex was created.

The launch of a crew is something

that we've been working towards for 17 years.

Narrator: Journalist christian davenport covers

defense and space for the "washington post,"

has been on the frontlines

reporting on the commercial crew program

since its inception in 2010.

This is sort of, in some ways, an experiment

to see if nasa can rely on these commercial partners

to fly their astronauts safely.

Narrator: Nasa astronauts doug hurley

and bob behnken will be the first to launch

on spacex's inaugural crewed flight,

marking the first time in history

that nasa astronauts will fly on privately owned spacecraft.

This first flight with crew is a test flight.

Even the flight itself is a test flight,

and it is done with test pilots work for nasa,

who will be evaluating the system itself.

And elon and I in strong agreement

that whatever it takes to make sure they are safe

is what we are focused on like a laser.

[ Applause ]

Narrator: Before spacex can launch,

crew to major milestones must be completed without crew.

The first is the demonstration one mission

or demo 1

in which spacex must autonomously fly

their crew dragon capsule

to the international space station and back.

The second test is called the launch escape test,

also known as the in-flight abort test.

If the rocket fails,

the dragon capsules emergency abort system is triggered,

ejecting the capsule safely away from the rocket.

Then there is the third and final test

called the demonstration two mission or demo 2,

which will launch nasa astronauts

bob and doug to the space station.

Bridenstine: When we think about the history of human spaceflight,

it's always been government owned,

government operated systems.

So the commercial crew program

is our way of commercializing human spaceflight.

Narrator: Robert cabana is a former astronaut

and the director of the kennedy space center

in cape canaveral, florida.

The idea is to not have to own the vehicles.

We buy a service.

We buy a taxi ride the space to do what we need.

We have two separate vehicles.

One spacex, one boeing.

Bridenstine: When you have multiple providers

that are competing against each other,

they don't keep coming back to the taxpayer

asking for more money.

We'd like to have access to space be so low cost

that industry is sending workers to space

in a way that's going to be transformative for humankind.

Narrator: When a commercial crew program was first proposed,

there were doubts about whether it could work.

Many worry that privatization

would lead to decreased oversight,

accountability and less revenue for the government.

You know, we really are in another golden age, if you will.

It's neat to see and it's neat to be, you know,

maybe what you would argue as it

is the ground floor of that now with commercial crew

and what we're doing for spacex.

Here with a commercial crew program,

you've got two new capsules.

The boeing starliner and the space x crew dragon.

New technology, new innovation going into them.

They're autonomous.

They have the ability to fly to the international space station,

meet up at the space station in orbit

and autonomously dock with it.

It's like a self-driving car that can park itself.

And that's a new technology that we haven't seen before.

Narrator: In 2014, nasa's commercial

crew program awarded spacex,

a $2.6 billion dollar contract.

After nearly a decade of designing

and testing their new spacecraft,

spacex will be the first private company

to launch nasa astronauts.

I'm pretty excited about being on the first flight

of a new spacecraft,

and it's awesome to work with the spacex team.

You know, it's just a just a wonderful place to be.

I couldn't I dreamed for a greater opportunity than this.

♪

Spacex is a hugely ambitious company

founded by tech entrepreneur elon musk in 2002,

ultimately with the goal of trying to colonize mars.

We want the exciting things that we see in sci-fi,

like sci-fi movies and books.

We want that to come true one day.

We're making stuff real.

In fact, I think hardly anyone in the public

knows if this is happening.

I gather you get this message across,

like really cool search happening.

You know, tune in.

Davenport: But for all of the triumphs and all the successes,

all the attention that a company like spacex gets,

they have not flown humans before.

That's a huge responsibility.

Nasa's astronauts for their pride and joy.

They're national heroes, and their lives

are being entrusted with these companies.

So we're going to see if they can pass that test.

♪

Narrator: Today's launch marks the beginning

of the crew dragon demo 1 mission.

This is one of spacex's most challenging milestones yet,

a five day unscrewed journey

to the international space station and back.

Davenport: Before nasa allows boeing and spacex

to fly their astronauts,

they require the companies to first do a test flight

without crews onboard the spacecraft.

That's to make sure that these companies can get the capsules

to the space station and back safely.

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

Reed: The demonstration one mission or the demo 1 mission

is an unproved flight.

We're sending the dragon autonomously

to space station to dock and come home.

We're gonna be in firing room four for the launch itself,

listening along with a team and kind of keying on the things

that would be relatively important to us.

Really is our chance to not be on board,

but be with the rest of the team that will support us

when we actually fly this vehicle

when demo 2 comes around.

♪

Narrator: This is the first flight of spacex's new

crew dragon capsule, which will one day carry astronauts.

It sits atop the spacex falcon nine rocket.

It's 16 feet tall, 13 feet in diameter

and can carry up to seven people.

This mission will test all the systems

required to keep passengers alive in the vacuum of space.

We spent years designing and testing of the vehicle systems.

That day is really the day that the rubber meets the road.

We fly the vehicle, we test the interfaces

of the rocket of the spacecraft and make sure

that it'll work the way we think it's going to work.

I mean, the sheer number of tests

that have occurred for dragon and falcon

is staggering to think about.

I mean, cumulatively, must be tens of thousands

of tests of one kind or another.

Narrator: Everything is riding on the success of this mission.

And if it fails, it's back to the drawing board

before spacex will be allowed to launch

nasa astronauts to the international space station.

One measure of success is how well nasa

and spacex personnel work together

across the country.

The dragon capsule is monitored

by spacex mission control in hawthorne, california.

The international space station is supervised

by nasa in houston,

and the launch of the falcon rocket

is conducted by spacex in firing room four

at kennedy space center in florida.

Nasa administrator jim bridenstine

waits along with countless spectators

in anticipation of this historic launch.

What's fascinating is the level of public interest

and uncrewed test flight.

I've not seen those since the space shuttles.

It's an amazing day.

Narrator: For elon musk and the team at spacex,

the stakes are incredibly high.

Failure could be a huge setback.

Not just for spacex and the commercial crew program,

but for human space exploration.

♪

Man: Go for lunch.

Narrator: At kennedy space center in cape canaveral, florida,

spacex and nasa are seconds away

from the historic first test flight

of spacex's new crew dragon capsule

woman: Five, four, three, two, one, zero.

Ignition, lift off.

♪

♪

Why energy in a rocket?

You know, you're basically putting enough energy

into a spacecraft such that it could look like a meteor.

It's just like it's difficult for people to even comprehend.

♪

♪

Man: Power and telemetry normal.

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪

♪

Behnken: Being able to watch the demo 1 mission

head up to the international space station

was pretty exciting for us.

Part of it was that we were seeing a test flight

that needed to happen before we were gonna get

our chance to go to space station.

♪

It's a myriad of emotions because you're looking at

all the different things that could possibly happen

during those missions, and you're excited about

seeing it be completed successfully.

Narrator: The falcon 9 rocket is composed of two parts,

the first stage and the second stage.

A rocket sheds wait as it climbs higher.

Once the falcon 9 first stage uses up all of its fuel,

it is no longer needed

and separates, making the entire system lighter.

Then after the second stage use up all of its fuel,

it also separates, releasing the dragon capsule into orbit.

♪

Man: Stage separation confirmed.

Matthews: The falcon 9 first stage is separating

from the falcon 9 second stage.

Once the first stage of falcon 9 has separated

from the second stage, it's done its job.

Its primary mission is to get the second stage

on its way with dragon to the space station.

We do have a secondary objective

for the first stage of the falcon rocket,

which is to come back from orbit and land.

Narrator: The norm has always been to let the first stage

fall back to earth and crash into the ocean.

But spacex has invented the first and only

reusable orbital class rocket,

which can fly itself back to earth and land

so it can be reused multiple times.

Matthews: For the first stage, it starts its engines back up.

It flips itself around, and the whole four stages

reentering the earth's atmosphere

and slowly making its way back down

for a landing on a drone ship

that is out in the atlantic ocean.

♪

Man: Landing lights deployed

and falcon 9 has landed.

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪

♪

Narrator: After the first stage, separation is complete.

The crew dragon capsule is propelled into orbit

by the second stage.

Matthews: The second stage is lighting up its engine

and it's taking the dragon spacecraft into orbit.

Once the second stage

successfully gets dragon into the orbit

that it is intended to go, its separate dragon

and moves away.

Narrator: This is a pivotal moment.

The separation of the second stage from the dragon capsule

is the final step of the launch sequence.

Man: Dragon separation confirmed.

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪

♪

♪

Narrator: The crew dragon is now on track to dock

to the international space station.

Bridenstine: It's amazing.

This is a game changer.

Now, let me be clear. This is the beginning.

This is the first quarter of a long football game

that's five days long.

I'm not going to be overexcited at this point.

Five more days.

Even though dragon is able to autonomously only fly,

there actually was somebody inside the capsule.

And it's basically what you call an anthropomorphic test device.

The passenger for this uncrewed launch is named ripley.

She is equipped and wired with sensors

that are going to tell us about her experience.

So during launch, she's going to experience different g forces.

And we want to make sure those are safe

for future crewed missions.

And we've done a lot to predict

what that's going to be like,

and we want to be 100 percent sure that our predictions

are consistent with the flight that she is going on.

What really matters is the direction

that those gs are going through your body.

We try to put all the gs through the chest

because they can tolerate a lot more.

So if you're dropping sort of like bungee jumping,

it could be going up and down your head.

That's not as good

as if it's going straight through your chest

and you're accelerating in a car.

♪

Rendezvous is the complex ballet

where a spacecraft goes from,

where the launch vehicle leaves it in space

to docking to the international space station.

Narrator: Robert dempsey is one of nasa's flight directors

for the international space station.

He works with teams responsible for this phase of the mission

called rendezvous and docking.

Dempsey: The launch vehicle places it in orbit.

That's low earth orbit.

It's actually fairly below

and behind the international space station.

And it'll perform a number of burns or maneuvers

where it will catch up to the space station.

And you can think of rendezvous is kind of like a case

where a police officer, for example,

was sitting by the side of the road

and a speeding car comes zooming by.

And what he will do is the police officer

will then go from zero

and immediately start to accelerate towards that car.

It's got to match that speed.

And eventually when it catches up to it, it's got to slow down.

If it goes too fast, it's going to go past the speeder.

If it doesn't go fast enough,

it'll eventually not be able to catch that speeder.

So it's the same sort of process.

This is a fairly critical operation

because this is the first time this vehicle has ever flown.

And we want to make sure it does not collide

with the space station.

Narrator: A little over 24 hours after launch,

spacex's crew dragon capsule autonomously flies itself

to the international space station.

Now begins the critical docking procedure.

It requires meticulous communication

between spacex mission control

in hawthorne, california, nasa mission control

at johnson space center in houston, texas,

as well as the one american astronaut

and two russian cosmonauts

onboard the international space station.

This is the first time that a commercial vehicle

will dock to the space station.

It's also the first use of the international docking adapter,

which is the port on space station

where commercial vehicles are going to come up and dock.

And so we'll see both sides get used for the first time.

Woman: The station is ready for the crew.

Petrzelka: The crew dragon spacecraft uses an automated system

that is able to sense the position of the space station

relative to the capsule

and is able to guide the capsule into dock with station.

Ultimately, the vehicles are fundamentally flying itself.

But we also have ground control, who's monitoring it

and setting up a certain amount of commands.

There's also a certain amount

of access that people in the space station.

They can see what's happening on dragon

and are in contact with the ground control at the same time.

Woman: Monitor approach.

Orientation as expected.

Vehicle is in the corridor, performing [indistinct]

At this point in time, we actually take a little pause.

We stop within about 20 meters of the docking port.

That's on the international space station.

- Hold, command center. - Copy hold.

Dragon hold confirmed.

Matthews: And then the engineers at both nasa

and spacex reviewed the data from the spacecraft they took.

They make sure that everything is going according to plan

and they're both happy.

Woman #1: Please command that docking lights are on.

Woman #2: Copy, command. Docking lights are on.

Then dragon is allowed at that point

to autonomously move forward

with the approach and docking to the space station.

- Dragon is resuming approach. - Copy.

Petrzelka: The crew dragon spacecraft uses it 16 draco thrusters

to maneuver into contact

with the space station docking adapter.

Woman: Frank is decreasing, vehicle is centered.

The capsule inches in towards the station.

Woman: Vehicles in the corridor.

- Orientation as expected. - Copy.

Dempsey: The mood inside mission control for a first time docking

of a new vehicle is always a bit stressful.

Now we've spent years planning and training

and preparing for it,

but space has always had a way of showing us

things can surprise us.

Crew dragon has a variety of safeties in place,

so that should anything go off nominal,

the capsule will automatically retreat

and keep the station safe.

Woman #1: All video and overlays look nominal

all status fields are showing expected status.

Woman #2: And we copy.

Musk: You got to dock with the space station.

And if something goes wrong, you're just in the void of space

and you're in a vacuum with nothing.

We got the space suits, we've got a lot

of backup systems,

but it's still a dicey situation.

Woman: Dragon is go for docking.

Narrator: This is the first ever attempt by the crew dragon

to track the iss and move in for what

must be a perfect, airtight lock.

Narrator: After a successful launch into space

and separation from the falcon 9 rocket,

teams at spacex headquarters and nasa mission control

closely monitor the crew dragon capsule

as it faces its toughest test yet,

a critical first time docking

with the international space station.

If everything goes perfectly as expected,

we'll just be monitoring,

making sure everything goes right.

Woman: Dragon is presuming approach and is go for docking.

The station crew is ready for docking.

This is the first time that a commercial vehicle

is autonomously docked to the space station.

Woman: Vehicle motors approach to dock port.

Primary range is decreasing.

Vehicle is centered.

♪

♪

Capture confirmed.

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪

Watching the demo-1 vehicle dock with the space station

was amazing.

It was kind of terrifying, and it should be.

These are the first time you do something.

You should be pretty worried about how it's going to go.

And it was amazing.

Proceeding to open the hatch.

On behalf of ripley, little earth

and myself and our crew, welcome to the crew dragon.

Welcome to the new era in space flight.

♪

During the unscrewed mission,

dragon stayed docked with the space station for five days.

That was to allow the team on the ground

to observe and monitor the vehicle performance

and for the crew aboard the international space station

to work with the vehicle and understand

how it was going to interact with the space station.

♪

Narrator: Now the testing of the dragon is complete.

It's time for it to undock and return to earth.

At that point, the international space station crew,

they reverse the steps

that they went through when dragon arrived.

So that means they close the hatch on dragon first

and then they closed the hatch

on the international space station.

The ground control team sent a command for dragon

to undock from space station.

♪

♪

[ Cheers and applause ]

♪

- Dragon is in the corridor. - Copy.

It takes about six hours for dragon

once it leaves the space station to come home

and splashdown in the atlantic ocean.

Dempsey: The mission is not over

until the astronauts lands safely on the earth.

It's not until then that we can breathe a sigh of relief

and call the mission a success.

We came out to see the splashdown

as well and understand what the recovery team

was going to go through, and so that was pretty exciting.

Matthews: The recovery team is already waiting

and ready to go get dragon out of the water.

Petrzelka: The 16 draco thrusters are responsible

for orienting the vehicle in the correct direction.

They fire to slow the vehicle down to the point

that it will come out of orbit

and begin to reenter the atmosphere.

Narrator: Reentry is one of the most dangerous points in the mission.

There is no way to stop reentry once it starts.

All the spacex and nasa crews must wait and hope for the best.

♪

Traveling at about 17,000 miles per hour.

When dragon hits the atmosphere,

its heat shield will be put to the test

as the vehicle is enveloped in a giant hypersonic fireball.

The atmosphere does the majority of the work

to slow the vehicle down to a few hundred miles per hour.

♪

Man: Dragon spacecraft, it's now subsonic.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Narrator: Now that the heat shield has passed its test

and dragon has safely slowed to below the speed of sound,

it's ready to deploy its parachutes,

which is the final step of reentry.

Parachutes are way harder than they look.

If you go back and look at the apollo program,

there are people quitting over how hard the parachutes were.

We almost had people quit at spacex

over how hard the parachutes were.

Petrzelka: When the capsule reaches the correct altitude,

we will deploy the drone parachutes.

♪

♪

[ Cheers and applause ]

And then the main parachutes...

♪

♪

To bring us to a jogging speed

before we splash down in the water.

♪

♪

Woman: And there we have confirmation of splash down.

♪

Matthews: We have a team of people on fast boats that go out

and attach ropes to the spacecraft.

They bring it over to the recovery boat.

The recovery boat has a crane which lifts

dragon out of the water and onto the deck of the boat.

You know, the system is more than just a spacecraft.

It's the it's the people behind it

that are operating it across teams.

Most importantly, we learn how we can keep the crew safe,

keep them comfortable all the way through

the journey there and back.

It's a good confidence builder, not only for bob and I,

but for the team that you can do it again

with the crew vehicle.

To see it pulled off, you know, so successfully

kind of really brought home kind of a ton

of excitement for the mission that will be demo-2,

the first crewed mission.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Narrator: Spacex is focused on the future,

reaching the next testing goal for launching crew.

They don't have time to look back.

Musk: The reason I started spacex back in 2002

is really just to help us get to mars.

You know, I thought there was like maybe a 10 percent chance

of success that spacex would work at all.

One path is we stay on earth forever,

and then there will be some eventual extinction event.

The alternative is to become a space faring civilization

and a multi planet species,

which I hope you would agree that is the right way to go.

Yes?

[ Cheers and applause ]

Well, I'll tell you, there's a lot that makes

elon musk unique.

It's passion for what he believes in.

He's committed to what he's trying to achieve.

He's willing to put his money where his mouth is,

and then achieve really stunning things.

Elon musk was born in south africa

and emigrated to canada and then to the united states.

He was one of the co-founders of paypal,

and that's how he made his millions.

And after he made his money,

start thinking about what he wanted to do next,

and what he could do to help humanity and space travel

was one of the ideas he had.

There's so many things that make people's sad

or depressed about the future,

but I think becoming a space faring civilization

is one of those things that makes you excited

about the future.

You know, his vision at the time was just we need

to get the american public inspired

to increase nasa's budget. That was his goal.

And I'm like, "hey, you and I have the same goal on that one."

this is under construction,

but this is where our mission control

and launch control will be.

There's gwynne at her cube.

Shotwell: I joined spacex in September of 2002,

and it was me and 10 other people.

Narrator: Spacex president and chief operating officer

gwynne shotwell is a key member of the team.

Elon was very clear with everybody.

We were to build the technology that was necessary

to take people to live on other planets.

This is the israeli test article

of our dragon spacecraft.

This area is used for the engine components.

Davenport: There's a saying the easiest way

to become a millionaire in space

is to start out as a billionaire.

Shotwell: He brought money, right?

He brought the first $70 to $100 million to this company.

And that was key because that allowed us some runway

to demonstrate that this little group of folks

could grow into a company and build the capabilities

that no one thought we could.

It created ultimately falcon 1 and did three failed

launches stuck with it, went up to the edge.

Narrator: Elon knew that he had to push the boundaries

and create a superior rocket in order for spacex to thrive,

but the company only had enough money

to build and test four rockets.

The first three falcon rocket launches ended in disaster.

The future of spacex looked bleak.

Hi, welcome to spacex. You're here in the lobby.

I mean, the very early days,

I'd meetings with nasa and they'd be like,

yeah, whatever, internet guy,

it's paypal, whatever,

you know, it's this just some rich guy who's going to,

like, lose all his money and rocket's not going to work,

which is totally fair.

I mean, we hadn't proven anything.

I hadn't proven anything.

♪

Davenport: In the early days when spacex was

first trying to get to orbit,

they had a rocket called the falcon 1,

and they launched it three times.

All three times were unsuccessful.

And they had one more chance, the fourth flight of falcon 1.

♪

If it didn't work, then spacex would have

gone bankrupt and we would not be around.

♪

Fortunately, a flight four did work.

Narrator: The falcon 1 rocket was a success.

In 2008, spacex landed their first nasa contract.

Spacex was now officially in the space game.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Nasa awarded contracts to spacex

and then orbital sciences

to fly cargo and supplies to the international space station.

Nasa brought capital to the company at a time

when it was absolutely critical for us.

Behind me is where the falcon 9

would sit during launch, and the big transformation

that's going occur over the next few months.

It's the construction of the launch mount.

With nasa, we initially got until like the maverick section

or like the highly unlikely to succeed

but we'll take... We'll take a chance on them.

But we're definitely not the considered the a-team.

Let me put it that way. [ laughs ]

Narrator: Under contracts with nasa,

spacex has flown multiple cargo resupply missions

to the international space station.

But flying cargo was never the endgame for spacex.

Their goal has always been to fly people.

It was the company's success with these prior programs

that gave nasa the confidence to hire spacex

to fly their astronauts for the commercial crew program.

We've had a long and very productive

working relationship with nasa over time,

gradually building up from these guys have no chance

to know over the course of now 18 years to the point

where nasa has enough confidence

that they're going to launch astronauts

on the spacex vehicle.

It's a great honor.

♪

♪

[ Monitor beeping ]

Uh-oh. It's teasing you.

That is a... that's the three stooges poke right there.

It's like the... [ laughs ]

Doug hurley and bob behnken are super experienced.

They have many years behind them.

They're two people who've been to space.

I did fly on the space shuttle previously.

I flew a couple of missions.

I went to space station,

did a lot of assembly space walks.

Man: And there's bob waiting.

I flew on sts-135, the last shuttle flight,

and then before that, sts-127,

which was an assembly flight.

Behnken: We go pretty far back.

You know, we were hired in the same astronaut class

back in 2000.

So going on two decades,

which is a I guess we're called the maybe the senior astronauts.

At this point. Old guys.

Never flown in space together,

and that's what's really exciting.

Davenport: Bob and doug actually met their wives

in that same astronaut class.

So they're both married to astronauts

and they both were even in each other's weddings.

Man: That's megan mcarthur, who is our flight engineer.

Woman: Astronaut karen nyberg blasted off for her mission

aboard the international space station.

Having spouses that are astronauts that have been

through what we're going through,

that kind of recognize that

there's long days that are involved,

and they appreciate that aspect of it.

They understand the ups and the downs.

They understand the risks.

It just makes it a lot easier in some respects

and maybe harder for them in some respects,

because they do understand all the risks and they've done it.

Woman: You left a three year old son at home.

He missed his first day, I think, at preschool.

Of course it's hard,

but we do have great communication.

My husband sends up pictures and videos.

We both have families that are pretty similar.

We both have young boys that are in elementary school.

They're both going to get a chance to really kind of see

us flying space for the first time.

I'm really excited to be able to share this with my son.

He understands that rockets are dangerous,

and he first said, "you can't fly on that rocket."

and we had to get him over as kind of, you know,

the emotion that goes along with riding on a rocket ship

and get them comfortable with that.

As we move towards flying these two individuals,

as we often refer to them as these two fathers. Right?

There these these two people who have families,

it's something that we take very, very seriously.

We want to make sure that everything we do is right

and that we're going to bring them home safely.

Any time you're developing new spacecraft, new technology,

there's so much risk that's inherent in that.

And when you put human beings on board,

that makes the stakes so much higher.

Everything, everything has to go right for it to be a success.

And the nature of our business

as military test pilots,

school graduates kind of going through what we've been through.

We recognize that there are all aspects of risk

associated with our missions or the tests that lead up to it.

It's a scary thing to be launching people, you know?

And risk is never zero.

Narrator: Spacex's success record is far from perfect.

Man: Three, two, one.

Lift off of the spacex falcon 9 rocket.

Narrator: On June 28, 2015, spacex launched

their seventh cargo resupply mission for nasa

to the international space station.

Man: We appear to have had a launch vehicle failure.

Narrator: Several minutes into launch.

The falcon 9 rocket failed and completely disintegrated,

destroying the entire contents of nasa's cargo.

It's definitely a setback, but the fact the matter is

rockets are just extremely difficult.

Narrator: It was later determined that the failure was likely caused

by a single strut inside the rocket

that broke free and breached a helium tank.

Then on September 1, 2016, another major failure.

♪

The spacex falcon 9 rocket

that was supposed to launch a communications

satellite blew up during a test fire.

You know, it's part of testing.

These things do happen, and the thing

you want to obviously avoid

is when people around that vehicle,

you don't want those things to happen.

So that's why you test, and spacex really wants

to test things to their full capability

and sometimes things do blow up.

Neither of these missions were intended to carry humans.

This is why the next failure spacex encountered

would be their most difficult.

We experienced an anomaly on the test stand

where our crew dragon vehicle

from non-crewed test flight exploded.

Narrator: During a test, fire of the engines,

the very same dragon capsule that was used

in the demo-1 one mission was completely destroyed.

Davenport: I mean, they lost the entire dragon capsule,

which was a huge setback for them.

And it raised some real concerns.

When the dragon capsule was lost,

we go through that range of emotions.

First, you're gonna have to deal with questions from your family.

And folks are like, "hey, is that the vehicle

you're going to ride on?"

how do you manage, you know,

telling your son that you're facing

that risk as you go forward.

You know, that's a thing we have to do.

Davenport: This was a moment where inside nasa,

I think people were wondering,

was this whole experiment going to work?

♪

Petrzelka: We experienced an anomaly on the test stand

where our crew dragon vehicle from non-crewed

test flight exploded.

Davenport: There were people on the beaches

of the florida space coast, and all of a sudden

they saw this huge plume of orange smoke go up.

♪

It's a it's an interesting challenge to figure out how

for, you know, a kindergartner, that's the age of my son,

how do you explain, you know,

the situation that that kind of unfolded?

Luckily, he's not on the internet

to be able to chase down those videos

on his own at his age.

But we went through the process of taking him to florida,

watching a rocket launch.

So after going to florida,

seeing a new ship kind of launch into space,

he was he was ready for me to go.

I think going along with that, not only,

you know, kind of reinforcing some things to your family,

but reinforcing things with the team.

We kind of felt like in some ways we had

to kind of get the team back up,

especially the team in florida,

because obviously they took it very,

very hard and very seriously.

They recognize that they're responsible

for our safety, kind of going forward.

So it's pretty hard on that team to look us in the eye

after having, you know,

a failure like that.

Right after the explosion,

nasa and spacex led an investigation.

They quickly found the root cause of the problem.

Narrator: The spacex investigation revealed

that the cause of the explosion was an unexpected reaction

between a fluid under high pressure

and a titanium component inside the vehicle.

The only we had... we had the capsule strapped down to a stand

and we had a large series of high speed cameras

and tons of sensors which allowed us

to really get to the root cause of a very nuanced risk

that we would not have otherwise known about.

From an engineering perspective, this was actually a success.

We identified a new failure and we're actually

making our vehicle safer.

We're making the whole industry safer

with this new understanding.

I'm very proud of the spacex team.

And in fact, it just came from a dragon engineering review.

We went through a detailed list of all the risks.

And I think that the dragon visionary team

has done a great job in working closely with nasa,

and also we're just going through

and double checking everything to make sure

that things are as reliable and as safe as possible.

How does a test pilot kind of prepare

for a first flight in a spaceship?

That's a great question, because the last time

we did this in an orbital vehicle,

it was john young and bob crippen.

So it's been a while.

Behnken: We usually ask, "what if it doesn't go"

exactly the way you planned,

then how should we be prepared?

And so we really try to dig into every piece of the puzzle

to really understand what's our plan

and then what's our backup plan.

And we're prepared for all of those things.

Narrator: Nasa and spacex must prepare

for all potential problems.

If there's a fire on the pad,

the astronauts must escape quickly so they train

an emergency escape systems.

Spacex has on launch pad 39 a an emergency egress apparatus.

If there is a fuel leak or the astronauts need

to get off that launch tower as quickly as possible.

So they've set up essentially a giant zip line

narrator: From 265 feet above the ground,

the slide wire basket whisks the astronauts down the line

in under 30 seconds

to a distance of approximately 1,200 feet from the pad.

♪

♪

Davenport: There are armored vehicles waiting for them

that they can get into and then be escorted away to safety.

Narrator: The launch pad isn't the only place

where astronauts face potential danger

if there are rough seas or storms,

the capsule splashed down in the ocean

would present a challenging rescue.

The water egress test is where we practice

getting crew members out of the capsule

when it's floating in the water in an emergency situation.

Landing in the water, anybody who's been on

a deep sea fishing trip

knows that you can get pretty seasick pretty quickly,

having not even been to space.

So landing in the water is somewhat of a challenge,

but the physiological aspect.

So we'll see how we react.

When the astronauts come back from space,

they'll land in water.

We will pull them onto our recovery ship

and the first thing we do is I'll enter the capsule

and I will make sure that they're healthy,

decide how they need to be brought out of there.

We want to make sure that we move them really slowly

to keep them from being sick.

And we'll do a lot of things

to keep them comfortable when they return.

This is what we do as astronauts.

This is what we do as test pilots, you know,

and and the opportunity to be able

to go fly this vehicle for the first time with crew

is just something you could never pass up.

When we go to test pilot school, this is the kind of thing

that you wouldn't even imagine you to get a chance to do.

It's almost a once in a generational opportunity.

♪

♪

- Hey, bob, - it's good to see you, doug.

Narrator: In 2014, the commercial crew program

awarded spacex $2.6 billion to create a new launch system.

Today, nasa administrator jim bridenstine

is visiting the spacex factory

to see how the taxpayers money is being used.

The spacex factory is like a candy land for aerospace.

It's like this incredible place because you can see rockets

being built, lots of rockets.

You can see lots of engines

being built, you can dragon spacecraft being built.

You can really see the cutting edge future of spaceflight

all the time all around you.

Narrator: This is the part of the factory

that houses the revolutionary falcon 9 rocket.

This rocket essentially been designed

with the help of nasa with the help of the air force.

It's really designed for how do you make the most

reliable rocket ever made?

- Right. - That is our goal..

Falcon 9 is essentially standing

on the shoulders of titans,

as they like to say in literature.

We've built upon a lot of those lessons,

the things that nasa has learned,

we've taken that, but use kind of a clean sheet

of paper that says, "how can you build a rocket"

knowing that we want to do things

"that have not been done before?"

in the history of spaceflight, rockets were used once.

Man: Lift off of the atlas 5.

Davenport: The first stages went up,

delivered their payload to space.

Man: We have stage separation.

Then they splash down in the ocean,

never to be used again.

That would be like flying cross-country

from new york to l.A. And throwing away the airplane.

That would make commercial aviation enormously expensive.

And yet that's what we've been doing in space.

We have lift off of falcon 9.

What spacex has done is developed a rocket

that can be reused.

It's first stage booster delivers

its payload to orbit...

Stage separation confirmed

then it flies back and lands on land

or at a ship at sea.

We have an interesting history at spacex

when we talk about failure.

♪

Narrator: Spacex knows that failure is an unavoidable stop

on the path to success.

Now that they're on the verge of flying astronauts

for the first time,

the stakes have never been higher.

Also, the restaged felt bad

because it's designed to be returned.

That stage is insanely robust.

Is really gone through its paces.

The falcon 9 is a huge step forward in spaceflight

and achieving the goals of spacex

and ultimately making life not that planetary

and lowering the cost of space.

The biggest achievement is the ability

to return the falcon home to land.

And it is hard. It's definitely hard to do.

You need to be able to accept failure during the design,

the innovation process here at spacex.

And a lot of times in the rocket business,

failing means you're making craters.

There's a smoking hole in the earth

somewhere where a great idea came up a little bit short

and crashed into the euro.

During the test phase, we would get close to the ship.

But we're maybe going sideways.

We ran out of propellant.

♪

But we do that because you use a test,

a fly, a test, a fly,

and then figure out how it works,

not necessarily by just running analysis in computers,

but by actually flying the rocket.

That's where you really learn

what the rocket can do.

For decades, honestly, people thought that that was not

something that you could do.

They thought it would just be too hard

to bring a launch vehicle back to control

that vehicle coming all the way back to earth

narrator: After years of designing and testing the falcon 9,

in 2015, spacex set out to make history

by attempting the first ever landing

of a first stage orbital rocket.

Man: Stage separation confirmed.

Insprucker: To bring falcon 9 back to earth.

We've got a navigation system in the first stage.

Most first stages don't have that.

The rocket will then relight three of the nine engines

to begin to slow down.

Each engine can be moved left and right, up and down

so that we can steer the rocket back towards

where the landing sites are going to be.

Man: Stage one landing burn has started.

Reed: I've heard it described as you standing on the top

of the empire state building and you drop a pencil off

and you have to land the pencil on it's eraser

on a postage stamp.

Ultimately, it's not beyond the realm of physics.

That it's not beyond the realm of physics,

there's an engineering way to get it done.

Man: The falcon has landed.

[ Cheers and applause ]

Wow. This thing actually landed intact.

Amazing. That was crazy.

[ Cheers and applause ]

There's an old phrase, if you're not failing,

you're not learning.

So if you're too cautious and you never fail,

you're not actually figuring out how to push the envelope

to do the kind of things that no one has done before.

♪

Musk: You know, there were a lot of people

that didn't think the rocket landings were real big thing,

that we were just like running the video in reverse.

Such I feel like it get confused

between improbable and impossible.

There's lot of things that are improbable,

but unless you breaking laws of physics, it's not impossible.

Insprucker: Currently, the falcon 9 is designed

to be flown 10 times.

Each time we do a refurbishment,

what we call vehicle maintenance.

That doesn't mean that it expires after 10 flights.

Instead, as we get close,

we will look to do some more testing

because we expect the falcon 9

can fly way more than 10 flights.

We just ease up on it a step at a time as we expand the history.

♪

This is launch complex 3a at cape canaveral

on kennedy space center.

This building houses and processes falcon 9s

that have landed at our landing pads

or have been landed on the drone ships and have come into port.

To refurbish a rocket, they roll into the hangar.

We load them into their pressing rings

and it's a matter of weeks to process them

and get ready for launch.

Reusability is incredibly important to space exploration.

One, it helps of cost savings. And two, it helps time.

If every time you build a new vehicle,

we would be waiting and waiting

and waiting for new rocket to be produced.

But we're able to fly rockets, land them and reuse them.

That means we can access space on a weekly basis

versus like a monthly or yearly basis.

The end goal is obviously to have zero refurbishment,

to be able to land and then relaunch like airplanes

to ensure that we're able to access space on a daily basis.

That's something that spacex is very proud of

and what we're trying to do as a stepping stone

to help us to get to mars.

Currently, the stages investors crash in the ocean.

You can't recover the hardware, so you can't see

where there was a close vote.

When we get the vehicle back,

we examine the vehicle and physically see it.

Was there anything that virtually had

a burn through or we were close on margins.

Right.

And then we can adjust that in the design.

Well, what we're seeing when you use the same rocket

the second, third, fourth, fifth time, insurance rates

actually go down, not up.

That's how you tell.

Insurance company is pretty sharp.

- Right. - They don't like losing money.

After you get through that first flight,

just like a commercial airplane.

You like an airplane that,

you know has been flown several times

rather than being the first customer on board the airplane.

The commercial insurance rate is the best indicator

- of the reliability of a rocket. - Right.

And we have the best insurance rates in the world.

- Oh, is that right? - Yeah.

I didn't know that.

The holy grail is really a fully reusable orbital system.

That's by far the most important thing.

It's like the difference between having aircraft

that are reusable or not or cars.

The profundity of this is

not well understood by very many people.

Narrator: Team spacex still has one more critical test to pass

before they will be allowed to fly.

Nasa astronauts.

What happens if a rocket explodes in flight?

[bleep]

There is a plan to save the crew.

Spacex now must prove that it works.

♪

Narrator: The crew dragon capsule is a spacecraft

that houses the crew.

It is replacing the cargo dragon capsule

that was previously used on spacex

resupply missions to the international space station.

The dragon spacecraft that will be using

to carry astronauts to the space station,

bring them home is really a 21st century spaceship.

My first impression of the inside of crew dragon.

I was amazed.

It's obviously a modern space vehicle.

It's very sleek design inside, very comfortable.

The seats are actually car racing seats,

so the safety factors go up considerably.

Musk: We've flown crew dragon

already to the space station and back.

We subsequently made a lot of changes, improvements.

But we also just have to be

absolutely paranoid about safety.

♪

Hurley: Well, the experience of training

in an accurate capsule with a spacesuit is invaluable.

Bob and doug were there spacesuits in this simulation

because we want training to be as flight like

as possible for them.

Spacex dragon, we are ready to test drive.

♪

Hurley: When you have all your equipment on,

it allows you to get more comfortable in a situation.

So the more you can train in those suits,

the better you'll be on the real day.

It's exciting to see, you know,

modern components in a spacecraft.

You get very used to the shuttle.

The 2,000 switches, circuit breakers.

The seats, it's not the most comfortable vehicle to fly in.

Behnken: You know, for those of us who've been living with switches

from the '60s for all these years,

to see a modern interface

is something that's pretty exciting.

Spacex dragon, we got [indistinct]

Woman: Copy that.

Some of the great innovations that we've made.

We have wonderful touch screens,

so you can see everything that's going on in the vehicle.

You can get all the data that you need about the vehicle.

You also control the vehicle all from these touch frames.

The gloves are compatible with the touch screen.

It's imperative because there are operations you need to do

with the gloves on.

[indistinct] are updated.

Hurley: The dragon capsule is almost completely automated,

so it should be able to fly the entire flight

without us intervening at all if everything goes normally.

And I think it's the way of the future with vehicles.

I mean, we see that now with cars.

We see it with airplanes.

And this is just the next logical step.

Woman: You should monitoring your dragon longitude

and knowledge about initiation of claw separation prep.

When you think about automation,

it's a layer of complexity and software

that needs to be verified.

So the task for crew on a good day is hopefully

that they don't need to do much.

On a bad day, they need to understand exactly when

and how they need to respond to the vehicle,

the vehicle's behavior and what it's doing in space.

Dragon, spacex, contact.

Spacex, dragon. We got you loud and clear.

Every single phase of the mission

will be simulated, so we have launch sims,

we have approach to station entry, descent and landing.

And every single phase has failures

that are unique to that phase and require different responses.

Dragon, we are going in step into the scenario.

Ultimately, even though it's able to autonomously fly,

we want to make sure that the crew understands

what's happening and that they can take control

at any point in time to ensure their own safety as well.

We can manually intervene if we think things are not going

the way they should be with the automation.

Dragon, spacex. Where's our flight computer?

Yeah, it looks like we lost it.

Narrator: Today, the astronauts are training for a scenario

in which the flight computers fail.

Since the dragon crew capsule is totally automated,

it relies on the computers

for almost everything.

With the computers down, this could be a dangerous

situation for the astronauts.

We've seen one of our flight computer processes

are not controlling the vehicle.

So what we'll do in training is we break dragon.

Dragon, basics. Please proceed to reboot flight computer.

So if the flight computer goes down,

we teach them how to reboot it.

Okay, we've initiated the flight computer reboot.

And we see the same on the ground.

We're following. Thanks.

During simulations, you'll see

a lot of anomalies, malfunctions.

Sarah and some of our other simulation supervisors,

they relish those opportunities.

Gillis: [indistinct] has been interrupted.

We are investigating root cause on the ground.

Thanks. Copy.

It's really good not only for bob and I as the crew,

but it's also for the team on the ground.

It really throws the team different curveballs.

Flight computer has transitioned to...

Spacex, all our displays are back up.

Well, that's great news.

- Flash count. - Victory.

♪♪

Narrator: Nasa has required that spacex's design of the crew dragon

capsule has a significantly higher level

of safety than its predecessor, the space shuttle.

Every aspect of dragon has been tested

at the sub-system level, as an entire vehicle.

There's so many test, it will blow your mind.

Narrator: Even with all the safety features

that spacex has built into their systems,

nasa is also requiring the inclusion

of a revolutionary new safety feature

called the launch escape system.

Menon: If there was a emergency on the pad,

the capsule is able to separate from the falcon rocket.

And that's done to protect the crew.

I want to escape system is essentially an ejection seat

for the entire spacecraft.

If the computer sense a problem with the rocket,

the spacecraft will automatically separate itself

and fly through the air with its super draco engines

so they can safely splash down in the ocean

with its parachutes and save the crew from flight anomaly.

The dragon spacecraft has two types of engines on board.

The first started 16 draco thrusters.

Those are small engines that make about 100 pounds of thrust.

And those engines are what we're gonna use to maneuver

and dock to the international space station.

And then there are the eight superdraco engines

for a launch escape scenario in an emergency situation,

which make thousands of pounds of thrust.

♪

Crew dragon is utilizing 3d printing to manufacture

some of the components on it.

A 3d printer works by laying down layers of metal powder,

and as it lays down each layer,

it will melt together a specific part

and then it builds up layer by layer

to create whatever shapes that you want.

And so this is really useful when we look at things

like printing an engine that needs many fluid passages

and it needs to be a very interesting organic shape.

And because we've melted together layer by layer,

you can make hollow parts, you can make very interesting

shapes that would be difficult to make by any other method.

♪

Narrator: In 2015, space six performed

a preliminary pad abort test

of their launch escape system.

Our pad abort test was performed to ensure

that our spacecraft design

could escape the launchpad safely to the water

in the event of an emergency.

Woman: Three, two, one, launch.

♪

During an escape, they will likely pull

between four and six gs.

That depends on the different variables and the situation.

I think a roller coaster is under three gs.

Man: We're over one kilometer.

Trunk deployed.

[ Indistinct talking ]

Passing through six hundred meters.

Narrator: The pad abort test was a precursor

to a much larger challenge called the in-flight abort test.

In-flight abort is a similar test,

but it tests a different set of conditions.

Instead of demonstrating separation from a rocket

on the launch pad,

the in-flight abort test will demonstrate separation

from a rocket that is actively flying through the atmosphere.

If there's a problem with the rocket,

the in-flight abort test will show

how the capsule can eject itself from the rocket

and safely bring the crew down to the water.

Narrator: The stakes for the in-flight abort test are massive.

It is the last critical milestone

that spacex must pass in order to be allowed

to fly nasa astronauts.

Woman: Liftoff.

Man: Four, three, two, one, and lift off.

Lift off of the 25th space shuttle mission,

and it has cleared the tower.

One of my strongest memories as a child was in fifth grade.

We watched the space shuttle challenger blow up.

A loss of the entire crew was a result of the fact

that there was no launch abort system.

It shuts down the program for a period of years.

Well, we want to do now is we want to get to a day

where when there is a catastrophic failure,

we have a launch abort system that keeps our crew safe.

♪

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us.

We're here today to talk more about the spacex

in-flight abort test

it's a demonstration mission for spacex to show

that we're able to eject our capsule off of falcon 9

safely and reliably.

This test is very important to us.

It's really the culmination of years,

close partnership with nasa.

Band it's one of the key steps

before we go to our demonstration to mission,

which will carry bob and doug up to the space station.

Narrator: Spacex must pass this critical

in-flight abort test before nasa

will allow them to fly their astronauts.

Soon, human lives will be at stake.

So every precaution must be taken.

The plan will be that dragon is on top of the rocket.

The rocket will take off.

At about 84 seconds into launch, we'll trigger

the launch escape system

and dragon will carry the capsule

safely away from the falcon.

Dragon will hit about mach 2.3 as it's getting away.

It will then hit an apache of about 40 kilometers high.

It will jettison the trunk.

It will reorient itself with the draco engines

and then it will continue its trajectory

down in about five minutes after launch.

The parachutes will deploy, and about 10 minutes after launch,

we expect splash down.

The dragon recovery forces will also be out there.

One of things I want to mention, and this is kind of exciting.

The falcon has flown three times before

and it's going to reflight for this test

for the commercial crew program.

The booster behind us or the falcon 9 behind us

we'll be flying our in-flight abort.

So this will be its fourth flight.

To my knowledge, the in-flight abort test

is the first ever full scale launch escape system,

safety test.

In the past, other crewed programs,

they've done subscale testing.

This the first time, I think,

someone has ever taken a rocket

and intentionally thrown it away with the sole focus on ensuring

that the system they're designing to ensure the crew

is safe will actually function as expected.

Narrator: A big part of the cost of the in-flight abort test

will be a multi-million dollar rocket

that will be deliberately

and completely destroyed in the test.

Hi, chris davenport from the "washington post."

question about the fate of your booster.

You said it could tumble, it might come apart.

You mentioned to fire.

I mean, is there a possibility

that it could actually explode

if people are watching from the beach?

Should they be prepared for that?

Sure. Absolutely, chris.

Yes, both stages are loaded with fuel.

We expect there to be some sort of ignition

and probably a fireball of some kind.

You know, whether I would call it an explosion

that you would see from the ground, I don't know.

We'll have to see what actually happens.

But I wouldn't... I wouldn't be surprised

and that wouldn't be a bad outcome if that's what we saw.

While you hope the abort engines never light,

you don't want that ever to happen because that means

something very, very bad has happened here

I'm in an emergency situation, but it can happen.

I mean, just recently, nasa astronaut nick hague

was on a russian soyuz

where there was a problem with the rocket,

the soyuz spacecraft.

Emergency abort systems lit and it ferried them to safety.

Now, it was a wild ride and they pulled something

like seven gs or seven times

the force of gravity on their body.

It was not a comfortable experience,

but they were alive and they landed safely.

And that abort system saved their lives.

The in-flight aboard tests for doug and bob,

that's immensely important because it just reassures them

that the spacecraft that are going to get on is safe.

Narrator: Key nasa and spacex officials

have gathered in firing room four,

also known as launch control at the kennedy space center.

They will oversee today's critical in-flight abort test.

If this test fails, the crew dragon program

will suffer a major design setback.

♪

Musk: We're doing everything we can to make this mission

as reliable as possible.

No stone is left unturned.

We're turning every stone over three times or four times

just to get that probability of success

as close to 100 percent as possible.

This test is about the entire team,

the nasa team and the spacex team coming together

and pulling off a pretty complex exercise.

We're going to launch a capsule,

we're going to put it in the ocean,

department of defense is going to have coordination

required between nasa and spacex,

and that entire team is going to show

that they can bring a capsule home safely,

bring the crew, if they were onboard, home safely.

And so that's really what we're expecting

to see out of this test.

Woman: Weather is looking okay,

and the range is green for launch.

Man: Dragon is in countdown

[indistinct] is armed. Go for launch.

Woman: Ten, nine, eight...

If the test isn't successful for some reason,

of course, you know, you have a whole group of folks

both on the spacex and nasa side

that will have to take a look at things and figure out

why it wasn't successful.

And this is obviously something close to the last step.

This is all part of building up to flying crew on dragon.

Seven, six, five...

Bridenstine: When you watch a launch abort test,

you're wondering has everything been done

to get this vehicle ready for an end-to-end test

in one of the most stressful and dynamic scenarios

you can imagine for space flight.

Woman: Five, four, three, two, one.

♪

[bleep]

Narrator: This is the final step.

Everything is on the line with today's in-flight abort test.

If this test fails,

nasa will not risk the lives of their astronauts

and the entire project will come to a halt.

♪

Woman: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six,

five, four, three, two, one, zero.

Ignition, lift off.

[indistinct]

♪

Narrator: This potentially life saving capsule ejection

has been years in the making,

and it will be over in just minutes.

Rockets are... it's basically a controlled explosion

that's pushing a mass into orbit at faster and faster speeds.

And it's the most dangerous part of getting anything to orbit.

And so to simulate a failure of the thing

that is most likely to fail, the rocket,

and demonstrate that the capsule with the precious cargo

that's sitting in that capsule can survive that.

That is so key.

Narrator: Spacex has launched a falcon 9 rocket

and crew dragon capsule.

The abort is automatically activated

when the system detects that the rocket is malfunctioning,

such as in the case of an engine failure explosion

or the rocket veering off course.

The abort can also be manually triggered by ground control.

That will happen in this test.

Man: Vehicle is supersonic and passing

to maximum dynamic pressure.

Narrator: Once the computer senses

that the rocket has malfunctioned,

it blows the bolts, holding the capsule to the rocket.

Man: Dragon launch escape initiated.

Narrator: Then the crew dragon's superdraco engines

fire for 10 seconds to propel the capsule away to safety.

- Dragon's away. - Whoa.

Musk: Because the super draco escape thrusters

are integrated into the vehicle,

you have a launch escape capability all the way to orbit,

which has never been the case for any spacecraft before.

♪♪

[bleep]

[ Indistinct conversations ]

[bleep]

♪

Narrator: Approximately 10 seconds after the abort

was triggered by ground control,

the crew dragon capsule jettisoned away.

The force of the ejection made the rocket unstable

and it exploded.

But the dragon capsule was already safely

a mile away from the rocket.

With the dragon jettisoned safely away,

the trunk, which carries unpressurized cargo,

is ejected and will crash into the ocean.

Now the capsule will begin to reorient itself for splash down.

However, the mission is not over.

With the capsule hitting a top speed of mach 2,

this last phase is key for the astronauts safety.

Our parachutes are triggered and deployed

when the capsule reaches the correct altitude.

So at a high altitude, it will deploy the drone parachutes.

And when it reaches a lower altitude,

the main parachutes will deploy.

[ Applause ]

♪

Woman: Fully open and we are coming up on about a minute

until splash down.

[ Indistinct conversations ]

♪

♪

- Splash down. - Yeah!

[ Cheers and applause ]

To watch it go from start to end successfully,

it just... it's really something to behold.

And I know a lot of emotions on both teams today,

and we're very excited about it.

It's just one step on this longer road to creating a mass

transit system for people to other planets.

Is everything good? Everything's good.

[ laughter ]

Behnken: So as a crew member,

it's going to ride onboard this vehicle.

Having a system onboard dragon

that can get you out is pretty cool.

I think people sort of forget that technology

does not automatically improve.

It only improves if a lot of people work very hard

on that technology.

We have to drive innovation hard to make life multi planetary.

I think this is very important to secure the future of life

as we know it and to ensure

that the light of consciousness does not go out.

Bridenstine: We are a nation of explorers.

We're also a nation of that leads.

And this, of course, represents us returning american astronauts

to space on american rockets from american soil.

So this is a great opportunity for us to once again lead.

And this time when we lead, we're doing it differently

than we've ever done it before.

Bridenstine: We need to make sure

that we are constantly pushing the envelope,

constantly moving forward with technology and making sure

that we are commercializing it in the process.

Today, we had a launch abort test

of a commercial crew provider.

Commercialization of space is the next giant leap.

And when we take this leap,

we absolutely need to make sure that our crew is safe.

Narrator: The success of today's in-flight abort test sets

the stage to send astronauts to space from u.S. Soil

once again in a mission called demo-2.

And for the first time, they'll fly aboard a private spacecraft.

Bridenstine: So in this very challenging time

when we launch to the international space station,

something we haven't done from american soil since 2011,

I do think that it gives people an opportunity to dream big

and to look up and to know that we can do stunning things.

And it gives people hope,

not just in the united states of america,

but throughout the entire world.

I don't generally get nervous,

but when I start thinking about this mission,

I actually get quite nervous about it.

The launch of demo-2 will be the day.

This will be the moment for this company.

This is the culmination of everything we have done

since the company was founded in 2002.

Musk: This is a crucial step.

Getting people back to orbit again, you know, knock on wood.

I think probably success is high,

but it is not 100 percent.

We're just doing everything we can to think

of any possible way to improve probability of success,

because this would be a big setback

if if something were to go wrong.

Narrator: Bob and doug are poised to leave quarantine

and ride in teslas to iconic pad 39a

at kennedy space center in cape canaveral, florida.

Behnken: We're excited, of course, for the mission.

And one of our goals is to share with everybody.

Hurley: I hope that people appreciate the amount of effort done

by so many people at nasa

and so many people at spacex to get us to this point.

When bob and doug

walked down the crew access arm to the dragon capsule,

they'll also be walking into the history books

as the two astronauts that returned america

to space from u.S. Soil.

This will be a stunning achievement

for nasa and spacex...

Officially launching the second golden age

of space travel.

This is but the first step on a long journey

that will take us back to the moon

and to mars and beyond.

♪