NASA views the manned SpaceX rocket launch set for Wednesday as a stellar opportunity to again unify a country fractured by politics and socially distant by way of the coronavirus pandemic.
Jim Bridenstine, a former Oklahoma congressman and NASA’s administrator since 2018, said there’s an important underlying moment at stake when NASA astronauts are set to carry out a test mission on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft powered by Falcon 9 rockets up to the International Space Station. It will be the first manned space launch from U.S. soil in nearly a decade as the government has relied on Russian Soyuz rockets to get to the space station for the past nine years since the shuttle program shut down.
“We are once again launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil. And this is a big moment in time. It’s been nine years since we’ve had this opportunity … Everything is looking good, and, as of right now, we are go for launch,” Bridenstine said during a pre-launch press briefing from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, we’re in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Our country has been through a lot, but this is a unique moment where all of America can take a moment and look at our country do something stunning again.”
Bridenstine pointed to the heyday of NASA’s space program in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam War and civil rights protests. He expressed hope that Wednesday’s liftoff could, at least briefly, unite a fractured country like it did decades ago.
“Here we are in the middle of this coronavirus pandemic, and we have this opportunity to unite people again,” Bridenstine said. “And that’s really what this launch is gonna do. It’s not just gonna unite Republicans and Democrats — it’s gonna unite the world.”
NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are set to take off from the Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida 4:33 p.m. EST and are scheduled to dock to the space station at 11:29 a.m. on Thursday. There was a 60% chance of favorable Florida weather for the launch as of Tuesday afternoon. If the flight doesn’t happen Wednesday, the next launch window would be Saturday.
SpaceX, the private spaceflight company founded by Elon Musk, will use the Falcon 9 reusable two-stage rocket to power the astronauts into space. This rocket system, which stands at 229 feet tall and 12 twelve feet in diameter, has been used in 83 launches and 44 landings and generates over 1.7 million pounds of thrust at sea level. The rocket will carry the astronauts within the Crew Dragon spacecraft, a 26-foot high capsule that is 13 feet in diameter, which has been used in 22 launches and 21 visits to the International Space Station.
Bridenstine answered a question about what he would say to the astronauts’ sons as their dads get ready to take flight.
“Their dads are heroes — American heroes,” Bridenstine said. “They are laying the foundation for a new era in human space flight. It’s an era in human space flight where more space is gonna be available to more people than ever before. We envision a future where low earth orbit is entirely commercialized, where NASA is one customer of many customers, where we have numerous providers that are competing.”
The NASA chief pointed to the Apollo missions to the moon, saying that NASA’s Artemis program was designed to get America back to the moon for good — and then to Mars and beyond.
“We are proving out a business model — a public-private partnership business model — that ultimately will allow us to go to the moon, this time sustainably. In other words, we’re gonna go to the moon to stay. We love Apollo. The Apollo era was fantastic. The problem is that it ended. And now we’ve got the Artemis program which is our sustainable return to the moon,” Bridenstine said. “And this time when we go to the moon, we get to go with all of America, a highly diverse, highly qualified astronaut core, that includes women. And what Bob and Doug are doing is they are the final step in proving the success of a public-private partnership business model that drives down costs and is gonna enable us not just to go to the moon, but to go sustainably with reusable landers to the moon. And all of this is ultimately for a purpose, and that is to get to Mars.”
NASA deputy administrator James Morhard said this was the first time that a private company had designed, built, and operated the manned rocket that will be used by NASA.
Bob Cabana, the director of the Kennedy Space Center, pointed out that 82 of 135 of the United States’s prior space shuttle missions launched from the pad that NASA and Space X will use, calling it “truly an historic time from an historic pad.”
Behnken, a veteran of two space shuttle flights, was selected to be an astronaut by NASA in 2000 after spending years in the Air Force flying F-22s and other planes, gaining over 1,500 flight hours in more than 25 different aircraft. And Hurley, also an astronaut since 2000 and also a two-time space shuttle crew member, spent over two decades flying Marine Corps jets, with over 5,500 hours in over 25 planes.
The two men praised each other during another online discussion over the weekend.
“Doug is ready for anything all the time. And when you’re gonna fly into space on a test mission, you couldn’t ask for a better person or a better type of individual to be there with you,” Behnken said.
“As far as Bob, he is the quiet bad — and I’ll let you put in the next word … And so there’s no question I can ask him that he doesn’t already have the best answer for, and it is such a pleasure and an asset to have somebody like that on a crew with you,” Hurley said in reply.
