SpaceX makes its historic liftoff
Elon Musk’s Falcon 9 rocket is the first privately built enterprise to launch people into orbit
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The United States opened a new chapter in its adventure in space Saturday when a SpaceX rocket blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center carrying two astronauts to orbit for the first time from U.S. soil in nearly a decade.
It was a historic moment for SpaceX, which became the first private corporation to launch people into orbit, and for NASA, which has struggled to regain its footing after retiring the space shuttle in 2011, leaving the U.S. no option but to rely on Russia to ferry its astronauts to space for as much as US$90 million a seat.
Both U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence attended.
The flight was the fulfilment of a risky bet by NASA under the Obama administration to entrust the private sector to fly astronauts.
For SpaceX, it was the climax of an improbable odyssey that began in 2002 when Elon Musk founded a space company with the goal of travelling to Mars.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off at 3:22 p.m. EDT from pad 39A, the historic site from which the crew of Apollo 11 left for the moon, after a seamless countdown where the primary concern was inclement weather that on Wednesday had forced a postponement of the first launch attempt.
The Crew Dragon capsule, which separated from the booster on time 12 minutes into the flight, is expected to dock with the International Space Station shortly after 7 a.m. PDT Sunday.
On board the spacecraft are two of NASA’s most experienced space travellers, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, both former military pilots who previously had each flown two missions on the space shuttle.
But their ride to space this time was on a vastly different spacecraft, a fully autonomous, next-generation capsule outfitted with Tesla-like touch screens and temperature controls that allow astronauts to keep the cabin at between about 18 and 27 C.
The launch came 3,250 days after the last shuttle mission blasted off.
Hurley, a retired Marine Corps colonel, was a crew member on that last shuttle mission, which took off in July 2011, also from pad 39A. It was the end of the shuttle’s 30-year life span, and a devastating blow to an agency that suddenly had no way to fly its astronauts anywhere.
Despite repeated warnings by NASA to stay home because of the coronavirus, tens of thousands of fans lined the beaches to watch a historic moment, but the agency drastically limited attendance at the Kennedy Space Center itself.
Sunday morning’s docking will be handled autonomously by the spacecraft, though Hurley and Behnken can take over the controls manually if needed.
The mission, known as Demo-2, was a test flight designed to ensure the rocket and spacecraft can fly humans safely.
Once complete, NASA and SpaceX would review the data and certify the spacecraft for additional missions that would regularly fly as many as four astronauts to the space station and back.
In 2014, NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX, worth $6.8 billion combined, to design and build spacecraft capable of flying astronauts to the station. Previously, it had hired the private sector to fly cargo and supplies there.
But outsourcing human space flight to companies was considered a risky and even reckless move in some quarters, even among NASA’s leadership. Along the way there had been a number of stumbles that delayed the first flights from 2017.
Boeing, the aerospace behemoth that had been by NASA’s side since the dawn of the Space Age, was considered the favourite to fly first. But it stumbled when the test flight of its Starliner spacecraft encountered trouble upon reaching orbit. Boeing and NASA officials scrambled to fix software problems that prevented the spacecraft from reaching the space station and instead ended the mission early.
SpaceX also ran into a series of problems. In 2015, one of its Falcon 9 rockets exploded on a cargo resupply flight to the station. The next one, another rocket blew up, this time on the launch pad before an engine test. Then, last year, its Crew Dragon spacecraft blew up during a test of its abort engines.
But SpaceX has since investigated and remedied those failures.
The United States edged closer to nationwide upheaval on Saturday as protests gained force from coast to coast, and as authorities steeled themselves for another night of unrest over the death of George Floyd.
The killing of the 46-yearold black man in police custody has ignited furor as Americans marked the grim milestone of 100,000 lives lost to the coronavirus. Video of the fatal encounter in Minneapolis brought crowds rushing back to the streets after weeks of stay-at-home restrictions, in a return marked by spasms of violence that further frayed the social fabric of a country beset by twin health and economic emergencies.
The spiralling street protests recalled recent activism by the Black Lives Matter movement, while also evoking signature moments in the turbulent history of racial and economic struggle, from the convulsions of 1968 to the riots that broke out in Los Angeles in response to the April 1992 acquittal of the officers charged in the beating of Rodney King.
Ongoing eruptions had yet to reach these levels, as mayors and governors beseeched their citizens to stay calm, while U.S. President Donald Trump urged authorities to “get tougher.”
“People are fighting for their lives,” said Rashad Robinson, the president of the racial justice group Color of Change.
At the epicentre of the national anguish, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, mobilized his state’s National Guard for the first time. Bracing for a fifth night of violence and riots, he warned that the destruction of past nights could be “dwarfed” by events on Saturday night. Governors in other states also activated National Guard units.
The Trump administration offered active-duty military forces to help quell the unrest, as the president escalated his rhetoric against protesters, tweeting about the “unlimited power” of the military and the prospect of “many arrests.”
The threat did not deter multi-generational and multiracial crowds from thronging cities throughout much of the day. The White House itself became a flash point, as demonstrators clashed with Secret Service officers outside the president’s residence in Washington.
The same anger that caused demonstrators to seek to breach a barrier erected on Pennsylvania Avenue seized many other cities.
In Austin, Tex., protesters took over Interstate 35, freighted with symbolism because it cuts the city along racial and economic lines. In Denver, hundreds laid down in front of the state Capitol for nine minutes — the length of time Floyd’s neck was pinned under an officer’s knee — chanting, “I can’t breathe!”
Some took to the streets in Chicago near the Trump hotel, where clashes with police at times turned violent. Trump Tower in Manhattan also became a magnet for protesters who fanned out across New York City in mostly peaceful displays punctuated by scuffles with police.
And a peaceful demonstration outside city hall in Philadelphia gave way to havoc, as police vehicles were set ablaze and protesters attempted to topple a statue of Frank Rizzo, a former mayor and police commissioner reviled by some because of his aggressive law enforcement tactics.
Kelsey Broll, 26, said the chaos deepened when the crowd became too large for protesters to hear instructions from local organizers from the Black Lives Matter movement. They were drowned out, too, as police set off what appeared to be sound grenades and tear gas, she said, and as protesters threw bricks into the windows of banks.
“I’m not condoning violence, but I think we need to band together to show the people in power that we’re not just going to let them slide,” Broll said. “I’m very sick of what’s going on.”
She said protesters were taking an added risk because the city’s stay-at-home order, designed to curb the spread of the coronavirus, is active through Thursday.
Duelling accounts emerged of the identities and motivations of the protesters, as Attorney General William Barr echoed Trump in blaming “extremist groups using Antifa-like tactics,” while officials in Minnesota said organized white supremacists might have infiltrated the protests to sow chaos.
State officials instituted new curfews in metro areas including Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Louisville and Portland, Ore., after the weekend opened in nearly 20 U.S. cities with destruction and arrests.
Overnight, protesters repeatedly clashed with police who, in some cases, used pepper spray and rubber bullets to quell crowds. Demonstrators responded by chanting, “I can’t breathe!”, spray-painting “Black Lives Matter” on buildings and closing off roads to demonstrate against police brutality.
In Portland, protesters smashed windows of businesses, including a Starbucks and an Apple store, and stole merchandise from a closed mall. In Atlanta, CNN headquarters was vandalized. In Cincinnati, business were ransacked, Dumpsters were set ablaze and two police officers were injured in skirmishes with protesters. In Detroit, a 21-year-old was killed in a drive-by shooting where protests were taking place.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, said protests once driven by the grief over Floyd’s death had been hijacked by people taking advantage of the discord.
“This is no longer about verbal expression,” he said. “This is about violence, and we need to make sure that it stops.”