SpaceX Launches Crew for NASA on Retiring Dragon Capsule

We live to space X Space Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral, Florida. Dragon Crew Dragon 13. You have four astronauts two Americans, one Canadian, one Russian cosmonaut. In the next 30s heading to the International Space Station. Uh, space in coordination with NASA. Uh, as it stands, everything nominal. This mission looks like it's go. Let's listen in to the countdown from Cape Canaveral, Florida. T-minus ten nine, eight, seven, six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Ignition and liftoff. Go, Falcon! Go! Dragon and go! Crew 13. 13. Carried by Dragon. Race to the International Space Station. Copy one. Alpha 72. All nine Merlin engines on the first stage at maximum thrust of £1.7 million. We heard a good call. The propulsion is nominal or as expected, the spacecraft will also begin to pitch down range, meaning it's turning a slightly horizontally from what you saw at liftoff to help build speed. T plus 40s on its T plus 40s into crew 13 S mission on fire, one throttle down of Dragon and Falcon nine. And we did hear that call out for stage one. Throttle down. That is in preparation for Max Q coming up here. Okay. There are four astronauts heading on their Falcon nine inside of Dragon capsule towards the International Space Station. Just hitting the moment. And Max Q, where the air is most dense. As the craft passes through Earth's atmosphere, the maximum moment of aerodynamic pressure. Those astronauts feeling 3 to 4 G's on the way up. This is kind of become routine. Um, but it's an important mission for SpaceX nonetheless. With the future of the Falcon as the launch system program on the question Dragon as well, I want to bring in Bloomberg Space correspondent Lauren Grosch. Um, you know, you and I talk about this all the time. Right. Lauren, this is somewhat routine, but give us the context. And why this this mission to service its, uh, is important. Right. Well, as you see, it's the 13th mission that SpaceX has done. So we really are getting into the rhythm of things. But it does come at an interesting time, which you said, which is that the future of the Crew Dragon that the crew is flying in is kind of in question at the moment. There's a lot of speculation that SpaceX is going to retire the Crew Dragon as soon as the ISS program ends. We don't have a clear answer on that, but this could be one of the few remaining Crew Dragon missions that we actually see them do for NASA. They have four more scheduled for crew rotation missions going forward, so we should definitely keep an eye on those. But yeah, it's an interesting time for these launches to occur. Okay, we're waiting for Meco main engine cutoff, uh, where the first stage engine shuts down. Then we should get stage separations. Uh, a pretty nice visual that we get any moment now. Um, three first time flyers. Lauren, uh, on this mission. And there you have it. That stage separation I was talking about a second ago. Um, just give us a bit more of the mission overview and, like, the reality of what it takes for Dragon to get to, uh, the ice. Yeah, absolutely. So these are, uh, pretty routine missions, if you can call them routine. Uh, you know, spaceflight is never routine, but in order to keep the ice quite out, uh, they send a cruise every six months to the International Space Station. So this crew is heading to the ISS. They'll be. They'll stay there for, um, roughly a week and greet the crew that's already on board. And then the previous crew. Crew 12, another four person crew is slated to come home once they do that handover mission. And so it's it's, uh, pretty periodic schedule that that space access helps NASA maintain, you know, regular crew, um, appointments to the highest. So it's, it's, um, you know, like I said, I hate to call it standard, but it is a standard mission for NASA and basically.