Space X rocket launch's US astronauts on trip to space station

AP/Houston Chronicle:

A rocket ship built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company thundered away from Earth with two Americans on Saturday, ushering in a new era in commercial space travel and putting the United States back in the business of launching astronauts into orbit from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly a decade.

NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode skyward aboard a white-and-black, bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off at 3:22 p.m. from the same launch pad used to send Apollo crews to the moon a half-century ago. Minutes later, they slipped safely into orbit.

“Let's light this candle,” Hurley said just before ignition, borrowing the words used by Alan Shepard on America's first human spaceflight, in 1961.

The two men are scheduled to arrive at the International Space Station, 250 miles above Earth, on Sunday for a stay of up to four months, after which they will come home with a Right Stuff-style splashdown at sea.
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With the on-time liftoff by the 260-foot rocket, SpaceX, founded by Musk, the Tesla electric-car visionary, became the first private company to launch people into orbit, a feat achieved previously by only three governments: the U.S., Russia and China.
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Ultimately, NASA hopes to rely in part on its commercial partners as it works to send astronauts back to the moon in the next few years, and on to Mars in the 2030s.
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Nine minutes after liftoff, the rocket's first-stage booster landed, as designed, on a barge a few hundred miles off the Florida coast, to be reused on another flight.

“Thanks for the great ride to space,” Hurley told SpaceX ground control. His crewmate batted around a sparkly purplish toy, demonstrating that they had reached zero gravity.

SpaceX controllers at Hawthorne, California, cheered and applauded wildly. Bridenstine pronounced it “just an amazing day.”

“It’s been nine years since we’ve launched American astronauts on American rockets from American soil — and now it’s done. We have done it. It’s been way too long,” he said.
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It was certainly a lot more interesting than seeing people steal and destroy other people's property in reaction to a crime.  This was an event that should make Americans proud.