spacecraft with a successful liftoff of its 19th flight, hovering more than 62 miles above earth, it hits speeds a total of an 11-minute flight. now it s just hovering just on the edge of space. imagine what it s like to see that view in that person. zero gravity, it looks like they have entered. this is astounding to watch live. let s bring in cnn s rachel crane live at the launch site, and colonel hatfield. rachel, you are there on the ground. what was it like when it took off? reporter: you guys i m sorry to cut you off. i just get so excited. this stuff never gets old. being on the ground here for these historic rocket launches. now, you know, they re happening
large window, we saw someone waving, looking up into the sky. i m trembling there with you. colonel hatfield, you were talking about how this is a perspective-altering trip, even if you re up there for just a few minutes. it s also life altering. tell us what you expect to hear from them? how life-altering has it been for you? i spent about half a year up, but either way, the experience is the important thing. they ll have to think about it for a while. there s lots of video and stuff, but they re going to have to take a while to integrate into themselves and think about, would you, what did i just see? what did i just do? what does it mean to me? then hopefully figure a way to reflect that back and let other people share in the newness of the human experience.
it appears that the door has been opened, as we wait, colonel hatfield, i do have a question for you. you were talking about the message that these astronauts will have for the world and the importance of what they share in their experience. you know, i know there are some folks watching this, who are cynical about private space travel, who suggest that perhaps these billionaires, jeff bezos, elon musk, should spend that money helping people here on earth. from your perspective, what do you say to folks who hold those sfrus? elon musk has spend billions for people on earth by launching weather satellites, earth-sensing satellites, all the way to measure the health of the world, measure the size of the greenland ice cap or the ant
people each time. you know that capsule can hold up to six people. we will start to see vanhorn, texas, become more and more prevalent as this launch site becomes used more by blue origin and reuse the capsule and reuse that thruster which i can tell you is pretty wild to see return after going to the sky, come back and land on a launchpad not too far away from where it took off. so the fact they re able to reuse these tools is a positive sign of what s to come. let me bring in colonel hatfield here. what do you believe these private spaceflights are accomplishing? and what do you say to folks who say, ah, this feel like a whole bunch of rich guys just trying to show-off? what say you? i think everybody not only
today and exciting, but to me that s what this signifies is the technological opening of a whole new capability. you sort of share a perspective jessica mir shared with me last week. let me play a clip about what she said these public. private partnerships. 4% of gdp was spent on these apollo missions. but now the nasa budget is about 4.3%. that s all of nasa. so we need this. we need these partnerships with private companies. we need these international partnerships. by leveraging these partnerships with commercial partners like spacex and boeing to concentrate on what we call near earth orbit, we can use or more limited nasa assets to go toward the next destination. so colonel hatfield, here s the one question that i have i m nervous about because we re