Houston, we have a podcast.

Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center,

episode 145, SpaceX demo 2.

I'm Gary Jordan.

I'll be your host today.

On this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers, astronauts, flight controllers,

all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight.

Humans are about to launch from the coast of Florida for the first time in almost nine years.

The last time humans launched from American soil was July 2011 on the final space shuttle mission

STS 135.

Since then, even before STS 135, NASA has been working with commercial companies on the development

of a new generation of spacecraft under a completely new model.

In 2014, the spacecraft development was narrowed down to two companies, Boeing and

SpaceX, with the goal of certifying their vehicles for transporting people to and from the International Space Station. In 2015, a cadre of NASA astronauts were selected to aid in the development and certification process,

among them Bog Banken, Doug Hurley, Eric Bow, and Sunny Williams. Over the next few years, they would help these

two companies develop the spacecraft with the added perspective of being experienced astronauts

who had flown space vehicles before, all with flight testing backgrounds.

Eventually in 2018, nine astronauts were selected for the first flights of these commercial vehicles.

SpaceX is about to fly their first test flight with humans on board on a mission called

Demo2. There have been a number of test flights to get to this point, namely a demonstration

flight without humans on board to the International

Space Station called Demo1, and an in-flight abort test to check out the escape engines

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