SpaceX Crew Dragon just launched astronauts and

Bob and Doug.

That’s what everyone’s calling them. Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley. Two NASA astronauts who just rode a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. The first crewed orbital launch from American soil since the Space Shuttle retired in 2011.

I watched it from my couch. In my apartment. During a pandemic. The streets outside are quiet. Nobody’s going anywhere. And 250 miles above all of this, two humans are orbiting the Earth in a capsule built by a company that didn’t exist when I was born.

I cried.

I keep trying to explain to people why I cry at rocket launches and I keep failing. It’s not sadness. It’s not even happiness exactly. It’s something else. A feeling that’s connected to watching humans do something that should be impossible, and doing it anyway. Like seeing the species at its best while sitting in a moment that feels like its worst.

The nine-year gap

For nine years, American astronauts had to ride Russian Soyuz rockets to get to space. After the Shuttle retired, there was no American vehicle that could carry people. NASA paid Roscosmos roughly $90 million per seat. It worked fine. The Soyuz is reliable, proven, solid.

But it felt like something was missing. Like we’d decided space was someone else’s job now.

The Commercial Crew program was NASA saying: we’re not going to build the next capsule ourselves. We’re going to let companies compete for it. SpaceX and Boeing both got contracts. Boeing’s Starliner is still working through issues. SpaceX built Crew Dragon, tested it, flew it uncrewed to the ISS last year, and today put two people on top of a Falcon 9 and sent them to orbit.

A private company launched astronauts. That sentence still sounds like science fiction to me.

The touchscreens

Can I talk about the touchscreens for a second?

The Crew Dragon cockpit has no switches. No manual controls. Three large touchscreens and that’s it. The capsule can fly itself from launch to docking with zero human input. Bob and Doug were there as passengers, essentially, with the ability to take over if needed but not the expectation that they would.

Compare this to the Space Shuttle, which had over 2,000 switches and circuit breakers in the cockpit. Or Apollo, which had panels covered in toggles and buttons that astronauts memorized in their sleep.

The shift from hardware controls to software interface tells you something about where we are now. The machine is smart enough to fly itself. The humans are there as backup.

I don’t know if that’s comforting or unsettling. Maybe it’s both.

Why it hit harder during a pandemic

There’s something about watching a rocket launch during lockdown that amplifies the feeling. The contrast, maybe. Outside my window, the world is afraid. People are staying home, avoiding each other, anxious about something invisible and spreading. Everything feels small and closed and careful.

And then a rocket goes up.

190 feet of controlled fire, pushing two people through the atmosphere at 17,500 mph toward a station orbiting 250 miles above a planet that is currently scared of a virus it can’t see.

The scale of it. The audacity. The refusal to let a pandemic stop the most complicated thing a civilization can attempt.

I watched the NASA livestream on my laptop. When the Falcon 9’s first stage landed on the drone ship (named “Of Course I Still Love You,” because SpaceX), I clapped. Alone. In my apartment. Clapping at a laptop screen.

Then the capsule reached orbit and Bob gave a thumbs up and I lost it.

What happens next

Crew Dragon changes the economics. SpaceX charges NASA about $55 million per seat, compared to $90 million for Soyuz. And that price will come down as they fly more often. More flights means more access means more people in space means more science means more possibility.

I keep coming back to this: for most of my life, going to space required being a government agency or a billionaire. Now it requires being a government agency that hires a company. Soon it’ll require being a company. Then a research institution. Then a school.

I don’t know when “then a person” happens. But the line is moving in the right direction.

And on a day when the world felt very small and very scared, two humans rode a column of fire to the stars.

That’s enough for today.

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