Thread by @WeAreSpaceScout

Postlaunch news conference. THREAD:

Conference starting now with a highlight reel of the DM-2 launch.

Panel: Jim Bridenstine, Elon Musk, Kirk Shireman, Kathy Lueders, and astro Pat Forester

Bridenstine up first.

"I want to be clear, the mission is not yet over, this is a test flight." "So far, everything has performed very very well."

"Congratulations to the NASA team, to Elon Musk and your team at SpaceX."

Bridenstine thanking Charlie Bolden now, credited with starting up the Commercial Crew program without much political support.

Next: Elon Musk.

"I'd like to just acknowledge the incredible work of everyone at SpaceX, NASA, for creating this incredible technology in what has culminated in getting astronauts back to orbit for the first time in almost a decade" - Musk

Elon is very overcome with emotion. "Kinda hard to talk, frankly."

"This is a craft made by humans, for humans, something I think humanity should be excited and proud of occurring on this day."

Next: Kathy Lueders. "Jim called me this morning and asked me "Do you think we're going to fly today?", a nice 6:05 a.m. wakeup call."

"Sorry!"

"The NASA and SpaceX team did a fabulous job. Very thankful for the weather clearing just one hour before launch. All constraints were cleared for both launch area and the abort track."

"They got to liberate their 'zero G indicator', which I'm sure all of you have on order right now"

"I am so grateful and proud of our NASA and SpaceX team, they are still vigilant, they are still on console, and I am going to stay in the LCC until they are safely docked, and we will stay vigilant until they are safely home."

Kirk Shireman now. "Well, what a great day. What a very very great day."

"I had the chance to get congratulations from many of our counterparts on the International Space Station, they have been a great part of Commercial Crew, they were watching today and they're very excited to have their crew members aboard our vehicles."

"Hopefully what you saw today was really smooth and calm, tomorrow we expect smooth and nominal, though I want you to know it's very very difficult. Smooth and nominal is really really hard."

Now, Pat Forrester, previous astronaut, chief of the astronaut office. Very very happy.

"I want you to know that I've been living with Bob and Doug in the astronaut crew quarters for the past week, and I have never seen a crew so calm and focused leading up to a launch like these two."

Astronauts sometimes are referred to as heroes, and no doubt, Bob and Doug demonstrated that. As Kirk said, there was "a lot of paddling underneath". Thanks again for getting our crew safely to orbit, looking forward to seeing them dock on the ISS tomorrow."

Now going to Media questions.

"For those out there protesting, is this launch for them too?"

"Look, this launch is for all of America. We have had moments in time in American history where we've had challenges. We think back to the 1960s, the civil rights abuses and protests, the cold war, Vietnam, yet...

...we had this moment on July 20, 1969, where all of America stopped, just stopped, because we had American astronauts on the surface of the moon, and we did that five more times." - Bridenstine

Should add. Capsule name was announced as Endeavour.

"This is a question for Elon. Have you heard from him yet?"

"I've not spoken one-on-one with him, I essentially just heard the press conference along with everyone else." - Musk.

"We did have a few moments in the firing room there, the president is excited." - Bridenstine.

Reuters: "For Jim, have you heard from your Russian counterparts yet? For Elon, with SpaceX's success today, have you heard from Boeing? What would you say to them?"

"I haven't talked to Dimitry Rogozin at Roscosmos, but I have seen the public comments, and he was..

very congratulatory, and that this is an exciting day. They believe in the partnership." - Bridenstine

"The trampoline is working!" - Elon

Marcia Dunn: "Can you talk about how you felt leading up to liftoff? For Elon, please."

"Well, speaking straight from the heart, my adrenaline was railed at 100%. When the launch was called off, it went down to 0% and I slept for the longest time in a year. Today, though, I just

felt like it was gonna work. I did not feel nervous." - Musk

Bridenstine notes that the Crew Dragon is now named Endeavour.

@EmreKelly "I'm wondering, with this being the first time humans have had a chance to experience flying on a Falcon 9 and a Crew Dragon, have you gotten any input from Bob and Doug? Is it a smooth ride?"

"So I have not heard specifically as to how it flies, we will hear soon"

- Bridenstine.

"On the webcast, it did look very smooth." - Musk

"I'd like to ask Elon, it's a significant achievement at this point, what is the impact of this on SpaceX as a whole including the development of Starship?"

"I'd like to express a word of appreciation for everyone involved in making this successful, especially for the Admin...

and Kathy, and yes, it's a little hard, I can't come up with sentences that make any sense and I'm overcome by emotion, but this is hopefully a first step to life becoming multiplanetary, such as a base on the moon. Hopefully this is the first step on that journey." Musk

Bridenstine now notes all the NASA accomplishments towards going to the moon, "Not only do we have it funded, we have contractors", referring to CLPS, HLS, and other programs. "The business model has proven itself successful."

@wapodavenport: "Elon, if I can ask you, you put the window in the Cargo Dragon as a symbol of your ambition for flying people, how have you kept your team focused on human spaceflight as your ultimate goal?"

Elon: "HSF was always the fundamental goal for SpaceX...

I cannot emphasize this enough, this is the thing we need to do. We need to make life sustainably multiplanetary. We can bring life to other planets and it's very important that we do so. I call upon the public to support this goal and to think about this goal and how important..

it is. Launching satellites is nice and it keeps the money coming, but it's ultimately all about life beyond Earth."

@SciGuySpace: "Question for Jim, it's been a little more than 8 months since you tweeted about SpaceX and it was time to deliver, would you say they have delivered? And do you have another message for other contractors?"

"Leave it to you to bring this up. There was a time when..

we had an issue with parachutes, where the Crew Dragon had a catastrophic loss, and yes, I sent a tweet and asked Elon to deliver, and yes, I've said it in a number of interviews, and since that day, Elon and SpaceX has delivered on everything NASA has asked"

"SpaceX really delivered something magnificent, and that is speed. They did in fact deliver." - Bridenstine.

@lorengrush: "For anyone, I'm wondering if there was anything unexpected during the launch today? I heard something about a component (Draco thruster) being a lower temperature than expected"

Lueders: "The only thing we saw as we were loading the prop, we had a sensor that was..

reading in a way that we had to go understand why it was reading as such, and we also had to understand what can happen if it fails, and understand what is that data telling us and how to clear it through the understanding of what the issue was."

@AviationWeek: "My question is for Kathy and maybe for Elon, what has to happen from this point on for you all to feel confident in August 30th/Early September launch of USCV-1?"

Lueders: "Well, I'm really proud of the SpaceX team, I'm usually confident around prop checkouts...

and I got an email last night saying the USCV-1 vehicle was in prop checkouts. Another thing is docking, along with landing, and make sure we're taking that understanding and any issues we have with the landing and rolling that into Crew-1."

@jeff_foust: "Is there any issues you're particularly watching as the Crew Dragon approaches the Space Station?"

Lueders: "So, the nice part about having (DM-1) was we got to check out a lot of issues with docking, and I'm sure everyone saw last spring how successful we were...

in the docking phase. Now having the crew onboard, we'll get to see how the system works with the crew and that's another big thing we're learning. Us understanding how to be docked with station, as this is our first long-duration mission, will be a huge learning opportunity."

Kirk: "We did have a solar flare, but that shouldn't affect our operations."

Jackie Goddard: "Elon, you said last week you had told Bob and Doug's two little boys you'd do everything you can to bring them home safely. Mind if you can share some personal perspective on what it's like to have that responsibility as a dad?"

Elon: "It really hits home, with a vehicle you're responsible for and their lives at stake. We've still gotta dock to the station, we've still gotta return, the return is more dangerous in some ways than the ascent, we can't declare victory yet, we must bring them home safely."

"We were able to do that with Demo-1, and that retired a lot of re-entry risk, but yeah. I'm getting choked up here. Sorry, not sure I can answer any more than that. We'll do everything we can."

"Do Bob and Doug want to dock manually instead of letting Dragon do it? Can they do that?"

Bridenstine: "The plan is for automatic docking and rendezvous."

Bridenstine now re-iterating Musk's sentiment of getting Bob and Doug home safely. It's not just Elon, it's the whole team.

Lueders: "They're called the dads, it might have to do with their age, and luckily they're on orbit so it's a couple of months before they can kick me."

Forrester: "The two astronauts have built a very close relationship, you can see it in their eyes and their smiles."

Musk: We would not have achieved this safety without the tremendous support of NASA and the team.

Bridenstine: Let's celebrate safely when they get home!

@AFP "When do you expect you'll go around the moon?"

"We could do it in two years... I tend to be a bit optimistic, so I'd be surprised if it'd take more than four." Musk

@businessinsider: "You've been working towards this for 18 years, what would you say to those who doubted SpaceX? And what was your last conversation with Bob and Doug?"

Elon: To be frank, I doubted us too. To those who doubted, well, you were probably right.

"Almost both (SpaceX and Tesla) went bankrupt. The joke goes: How do you make a small fortune in the rocket industry? You start with a large one. We barely made it with the fourth launch of the Falcon 1 and we also had to win the NASA CRS contract, and that came towards end of 08

Otherwise, we would not have made it. Fate smiled upon us."

On Bob and Doug, Pat Forrester: "I guarantee ya, Bob and Doug are gonna enjoy their time on the ISS."

@SPACEdotcom: "Could you talk about what else Bob and Doug will be doing now that they have completed the manual flight test? What else is on the to-do list?"

Lueders: Well, they did their far-field demo, they'll be doing another demonstration closer to the space station...

"This is kinda cool, because Bob and Doug get to fly the work that they've been helping develop and figure out how it's really working on orbit, they'll get to see how the ECLSS system works, how the suit feels, can you get in and out of the suit, I won't talk about the waste...

One of the things that's really important is how does the real thing really approximate what you've been practicing on for the last few years? They'll be able to share with the next crews how it felt, and share that experience especially with the USCV-1 crew."

Pat Forrester: "The hardest thing they'll do tomorrow is to hand it over to the computers and not dock it themselves. They would highly enjoy docking it themselves."

Closing remarks: "This is a great day for the US, it does represent many years of work, a question came up about doubters. There was a day when Charlie Bolden was trying to get this program off the ground and he had members of congress on both sides in opposition and gave him a

hard time about it. Bolden persevered, and pushed through. That was the beginning of what we all get to experience today. "

"Bob and Doug were also joking, like, Bob joked that Doug was jinxing the launch as Doug's last flight scrubbed 5 separate times before flying on the sixth

so I just wanna make sure we're keeping them in mind, and the fact that at SpaceX, you don't call them Bob and Doug, you call them the Dads, and this is a great day for all of America. It's been 9 years since we've had this opportunity and we're here now. There's 100,000 people

behind this. It's a great day for the US and a great day for our international partners. On USCV-1 we'll have an international partner onboard from JAXA. We can breathe sighs of relief, but we can't celebrate yet. Congrats to SpaceX, Elon Musk, Kathy Lueders, etc."

Go to nasa.gov/commercialcrew for more information. Go SpaceX, Go NASA, Go Bob and Doug, and Go America!

Conference over.