FOLIO
Words and Photos by Sam Kaplan
On Saturday, Sept. 28, at 1:17 pm EST, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster B1085 — on its second-ever flight-– ignited its nine Merlin engines and lifted off from Space Launch Complex-40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Mounted atop the booster was Crew Dragon Freedom– on its fourth flight– carrying Mission Commander astronaut Nick Hague, and Mission Specialist Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov.
By the time we stepped onto the viewing lawn, NASA’s countdown clock was already ticking down from 8 minutes. Reporters, journalists, and space enthusiasts were scattered across the grass, all waiting for the historic Crew-9 mission to begin. If you haven’t seen a launch this close, words can’t really capture what’s about to happen. Even in broad daylight, the moment the booster engine fired, it was like a second sun blazing on the horizon. And the sound? Imagine a blown-out car speaker — blasting at full volume — with a roar that sounds as if the air is being ripped apart, molecule by molecule. There is something so surreal about bearing witness to people leaving the Earth behind and entering orbit — you just had to be there.
But the excitement doesn’t end there. Once the rocket reaches orbit, the capsule — where the astronauts are — separates from the booster, which falls back down to Earth. Traditionally, these boosters would splash into the ocean, where a recovery crew would fish them out. But SpaceX’s boosters are designed to land themselves safely back on a pad (or a boat, in many cases). Just minutes after Falcon 9 disappeared from view, the Statue of Liberty-sized booster began its descent from the clouds. The booster relit a single engine, bringing it from a speed of 3,000 mph to a mere 5 (as if it just saw Florida Highway Patrol). Its landing legs then unfold as it touches down at the landing zone. At first, it was nearly silent. And then came the sonic boom*.
The original mission planned to carry four crew members: Commander Zena Cardman, Pilot Hague, Mission Specialist Stephanie Wilson, and Mission Specialist Gorbunov. However, when NASA decided not to return astronauts Butch Willmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams — the crew of the Boeing Starliner CFT-1 test flight — on Starliner, two seats opened up for Willmore and Williams. As a result, Cardman and Wilson were removed from the mission lineup.
“I think it was hard not to watch that rocket lift off without thinking, ‘That’s my rocket and that’s my crew,” said Cardman in a NASA live stream of the Crew-9 launch.
What happened to the Boeing Starliner capsule?
It returned safely but empty. Starliner came back to Earth with no issues in the early morning on Sept. 7, 2024. In hindsight, Williams and Willmore could have returned safely if they needed to in an emergency, but the risk with lives at stake was not worth it.
Are the Boeing astronauts still stranded?
No, and they never were. While Willmore and Williams’ mission went from eight days to nearly eight months, this decision was made out of NASA’s abundance of caution with Starliner being on its first-ever crewed flight and suffering from helium leaks and thruster issues. They had multiple ways to return home safely in case of an emergency, even before Crew-9 arrived (Starliner was deemed safe for an emergency return, and Crew-8’s Dragon was still at the ISS.) This does not mean, however, that the flight was not a nightmare for Boeing, who haven’t been able to catch a break in the public eye.
Is Crew-9 a dedicated rescue mission?
No … technically not. This mission is a standard, approximately five-month mission, just with added room for the CFT-1 crew’s return. Williams and Willmore are absolutely fine aboard the International Space Station.
This is what NASA says. On the contrary, it’s hard to not view a crew being shifted to make room for two astronauts not returning on their intended capsule as anything but a “rescue.”
Crew-9 Makes History
Dragon Freedom docked with the International Space Station at approximately 5:30 p.m. EST on Sunday, Sept. 29, where crew members Hague and Gorbunov were greeted warmly by the Expedition 72 team, led by Commander Williams.
In many ways, this launch is historic beyond its ties to the Boeing mission. It’s the first time a crewed mission has ever launched from SLC-40, a launch pad that has been operational since 1965. Equally notable, it’s the first Dragon mission to carry only two crew members since the groundbreaking Demo-2 flight, which famously launched astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken—affectionately known as the “space dads.” Adding to the momentous nature of the mission, Hague became the first active duty United States Space Force Guardian to venture into space since the branch’s founding in 2019. This mission will also mark a first in terms of recovery, as Dragon Freedom is planned to be retrieved from the Pacific Ocean, a significant shift from previous recovery locations.
Hague himself captured the spirit of the mission perfectly as they entered orbit, remarking, “I’m pretty sure my youngest son would say it was sigma.”**
What is it like inside a Dragon spaceflight capsule?
Well, numbers-wise, it’s 14.4 feet tall by 12 feet wide. For a first-hand account, I asked Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn astronaut Jared “Rook” Isaacman about what it’s like inside Dragon:
“Very roomy compared to Soyuz [Russian capsule in use since the ’60s]. You can get a lot done for probably a few weeks if you had enough life support consumable.”
The Beach House is a home on the Floridian coast built in 1962. It’s a quaint, waterfront home, first built with the intention of housing military officers working along the coast, where missile testing had been occurring since 1949. However, not even a year after it was built, the surrounding area began to be built up into what we now know as the Kennedy Space Center. With the help of the Army Corps of Engineers, NASA bought the house, and all development around it, and tore down everything … except for the one simple house on the water.
Since then, that house has had a special place in history, as the traditional last stop for astronauts before they depart from our planet. Astronauts will typically hold barbeques for their families, as well as leave behind signed bottles of wine before they depart for the final frontier. Most who visit tend to feel mixed emotions, as Donna Mullane, wife of astronaut Richard “Mike” Mullane, said in a NASA interview, “As a spouse, you know you’re coming out here to say goodbye, and you don’t know if it’s the last time.”
For years, this beach house has stood as a monument to spaceflight history, where astronauts getting ready to explore the cosmos get one last view of the planet that we call home.
The set of double doors marked 1238 at the Kennedy Space Center appear as normal as any other doors on the sprawling space complex. The difference? These doors have served as the spot of crew walkouts since 1968.
Every crew since Apollo 7 has walked out, fully suited up, to climb aboard transport to the launch pad before they head , all as cameras fire away to capture the iconic shot of these American heroes. Looking at the doors, it is now easy to recognize them, as they’ve been marked… with stickers! Ever since STS-87 (the 88th flight of the Shuttle in 1997), Shuttle crews, Crew Dragon crews and the Boeing crew have placed a sticker, marking their place among all the missions that came before them and paved the way for the missions of today. Door 1238 stands as a reminder to not only look forward to the future of spaceflight but also a memorial to the past, and those we’ve lost along the way.
*sonic boom: (SAH-nik BOOM) – a loud, explosive noise caused when an object travels through the air faster than the speed of sound, creating shock waves. The sound of a sonic boom is intense because it contains all the sound energy the object has produced along its path, released all at once to listeners on the ground.
**Gen Z Translator— Sigma: sig·ma (SIG-muh) – a stupid, internet brain-rot term for epic or cool.
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