(upbeat music)
- What's up, guys, good morning.
We're going to the SpaceX rocket launch.
The first time they've launched on 39-B.
And is, I think it's 39-B.
It's the first time that anybody has launched on this pad,
since 2001 and the space shuttle went.
They've repurposed the thing,
spent almost $100 million on it.
And they're going to launch a rocket.
It's going to take off,
throw a bunch of science experiments and supplies,
and then it's going to,
part of the rocket's going to break off,
and it's going to come over and it's going to come back
and down, and land.
And we have unprecedented access,
exactly where the media is,
as close as you can get.
Hopefully, today's going to be a fun day,
and we're going to see some rockets take off.
(upbeat music)
- Well, you sound a little bit more awake this morning
than I had expected you to be.
(group laughs)
- [Man] Not that bad, right?
- Hey, you don't need coffee
if you're watching a rocket launch.
That'll wake you up.
- We're getting closer, we're on the bus right now,
heading to the press area.
Just passing the space center visitors complex.
And this is where the public can go.
So we are now going toward the media area.
(upbeat music)
Off the bus, we made it.
So I'm excited, it's going to be good.
Hope we get rockets, and if it,
I guess if, they said if they have a,
I can't remember the term that they used,
but it wasn't an explosion.
But if it crashes somewhere over there,
there's toxic gas that will be in the air.
And we have to go to the media building
that has a meatball on top of it.
I think that's over here.
Where is that meatball?
The countdown begins.
So there's going to be a roped-off area
that we need to stay in the entire time,
so there's a giant roped-off area here,
then there's a small one over there,
that's like a sheep corral.
Confirmed.
This yellow box is our home
for the next one hour, five minutes.
- It's the bullpen, it's the social media bullpen.
- Social media bullpen, right here.
- The news media are over there.
- Just anywhere.
- And employees, yeah.
- And, just anywhere?
- Yeah.
- Good news is, we're far away from the rocket.
Bad news is, there's a swamp right here,
so we need to watch for alligators.
There's the big NASA thing, here's media.
Nobody, no other media is here, but here's us.
- They just have to keep us contained.
- Can they move bleachers in?
- [Man] Yeah, this is our area.
Social media. - We're going to have to form
like the trapeze act, like get on each other's shoulders,
and to get good elevation to see this.
- Just want to go get a picture by this thing.
It's the countdown clock, I promise I won't break it.
Just get a picture?
You'll be, you, if you ran for that,
I'm like 80% confident, you're going to get sniper.
Sniper's going to take you down.
(gunshot)
- There are people by it.
I'm willing to take the risk.
- 10, nine eight,
two, one, and then we turn this way.
In our box, stay in the box.
I'm ready, ready.
- Think that was a good practice run.
- Where's the media, we're less than an hour.
We're the only one in this grass field.
They're probably inside, they probably have like,
full buffet. - There's no other
blocked off sections, yeah.
- Omelet station. (laughs)
- The short end of the stick again.
- How's it looking over here, Zack?
You got the shot?
- Pretty good.
- So Zack has this camera at this really big lens?
- Look at that.
- Oh, yeah, that's close.
And then let's work it through.
Let's pretend like it's going up,
let's see how smooth you are.
(imitating rocket sound)
- And that's the sound it makes.
- That's really good, like the sound.
- Then we got the clouds in there.
- And then the sonic boom hits.
(explosion sound)
Boom, yes, we're ready, we got this.
So here's what's going on, guys.
I got to talk quiet, people are watching,
and listening with their headphones.
We're going to go, and we're going to ask
if we can go over to the time clock.
There's literally no reason why we shouldn't.
There's nobody on this grass field,
we're stuck in this crowd.
We're not going to do anything dangerous,
we're just going to walk over to this clock over here.
- We've been sniffed, we're safe.
- Yeah, the dog sniffed us and we don't have bombs.
We just want to walk over and get a picture.
I have, for some reason, that's too much to ask.
So I'm going to take you along,
and put the camera down a little bit,
and I'm going to ask her if we can do it.
(bold music)
(crowd chattering)
- Yeah, no, it's, you know, it's an exhausting job.
But they get to go see a lot of cool things.
- Right, lots of cool stuff.
- Yeah.
- So we're getting closer.
- You're getting closer.
- Can we go get, can we just go get
a quick picture of the front of that sign?
- You know what, let's do a group shot.
- [Woman] Yes!
- That's something, that's something.
(upbeat music)
We're going to the clock.
We're going to see it.
We're at the clock.
It's the countdown clock, it's official.
We made it, we got the shot, that's all we needed.
I'm good now.
Game.
Update, we've got, what's the countdown say?
18 minutes left, and the momentum's slowed a bit.
I'm tired, just laying on the grass.
Literally the final countdown is happening right now.
Three minutes left.
Zack is jerry-rigging this tripod to put his cameras up.
1:33, 33.
The launch is happening, yes!
This is actually happening, we're here.
Almost less than a minute, the rocket is right there,
ready to launch still.
There it is, guys, we've got 59, 58.
48, 46, yes.
- [Crowd] Eight, seven...
(explosion)
They stopped it at one.
That was super close, guys.
- [Man] What's up? What was it?
- [Woman] One second to launch window,
which might mean that it is scrubbed.
- What?
They put 13 seconds on the clock,
that's plenty of time to shoot a rocket off.
Come on, let's do it.
- They just said it's,
they added 13 seconds on this.
- Okay, 30 seconds on the game clock, guys.
The referee's got together, they looked at the film,
the footage, there's 13 seconds left, not one.
There it is, lucky number 13 is not actually a lucky number.
(sad piano music)
Stressful, stressful.
- There are a few apps, actually,
called the ISS tracker.
You'll see that the International Space Station
is above us right now.
Either that, or it's just gone below the horizon.
- So that's the thing, guys.
The Space Station is flying by,
and they have to time it at the right second
to launch this thing up.
So, if we miss this window right now, which, kind of...
- [Man] It's aborted.
- [Man on Radio] They are positioning
for a 24-hour scrub turnaround.
- We missed it, that's it, we're screwed, no rocket.
- [Man] 24 hours.
- 24 hour delay, because if you miss it, you're done.
The only way to describe the social media corral
is complete sadness and despair.
People are falling on the ground in sadness.
I hope you enjoyed our trip to Florida,
and all the hype that we had to watch the rocket launch.
We're going to go get on a flight to Vegas now,
we're heading home.
I didn't know there was assigned seating,
I mean there was no.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa.