Transcript of NASA, SpaceX launch capsule to bring home Starliner astronauts

All right, here we go. Let's take a look at this. Listen.

And lift off of crew nine. Go, SpaceX. Go, Falcon. Go, NASA.

Vehicle is pitching downrange. Stage one alpha. Stage one, propulsion is nominal.

Copy. One alpha.

So, Chris, what are you seeing so far? It looks like a It's a pretty perfect launch so far.

Yeah. Look, as it's punching a hole up through the clouds there. Yeah, it looks perfect so far. The thing you want to hear, it's a NASA word or a SpaceX word, but nominal. That means everything's going exactly the way you think? It's steering exactly the right way. The engines are burning the fuel at, what, 700 gallons a second in order to get the vehicle accelerating the right way. And what they're doing is launching exactly into the same orbit as the space station. So they got to be perfectly lined up like two cars on a racetrack. And it'll take a little over a day for them to catch up and dock. But all the critical stuff is happening right now. There's a great view looking back at Earth from the rocket ship.

Yeah, Chris, you're talking to us as we're watching this about two of your friends on that rocket.

What is it like to be in that rocket right now? Copy, one problem. The excitement. You said it's obviously dangerous, but the excitement of being there, too. Well, they're both experienced space people.

Nick's flown in space. Nick flew on a Russian rocket ship that failed during launch, and they had an emergency abort and had to land just a few miles from the launch pad a few years ago. So nick is really experienced and hoping this rocket is going to work well today. Mostly, they are, I think, the two most focused people in the universe right now on all of the instruments, all of the things, making sure the vehicles behave in itself. The excitement comes later. You got to focus and pay attention and be the professional that is helping that vehicle get to space. But look at that view there. You can already see they're above almost all the air. You can see that a little bit thin blue of the atmosphere on the distant horizon. They're above all the weather that Helene left over. So far, so good. Then we will have the separation of the first.