This is a huge deal, because in the past decade, all we've seen from the U.

S is stuff like this.

Cargo missions, experiments and test launches, some of which have failed.

But now there are two human people on board headed for the international space station, which hasn't happened since 2011 when NASA shut down the space shuttle program.

Since then, China and Russia have been the Onley two countries on Earth with the ability to launch humans into space.

So why did it take so long to send Americans back to space from America on?

Why are we doing it right now?

On July 21st, 2011 the space shuttle Atlantis touched down at Kennedy shuttle landing facility for the final time.

After 30 years, NASA was ending its space shuttle program, but it was never supposed to last that long.

Anyways, the space shuttle was originally proposed as a 15 year program to develop a reusable and low cost way to get to space, mainly toe haul up the materials needed to build the international space station, and then once it was built, the people needed to run it.

The space station is a football field sized research station in low earth orbit, invaluable not only for learning about space itself, but also for experimenting in microgravity, which can't be recreated on Earth on the space station was successfully built, but the shuttle never quite lived up to its low cost promise.

Early estimates in 1973 put the cost per flight at $9.3 million but by the end of its run, the numbers added up to 1.5 billion.

Permission on the program also cost lives.

Shuttles were destroyed in flight during the 1986 Challenger in 2003 Colombia disasters, killing all seven astronauts on board.

In both instances, coupled with rising costs, it was clear the program needed to end.

But NASA didn't want out of the human space like game altogether, because if we're going to go beyond the moon, well, we need more information.

One thing the space station helps us understand is what happens to the human body in space.

This is a huge area of research We need to understand before we start talking about sending people to the moon and staying there.

If we don't do that research or as much of it, then we're not doing due diligence that we need before we start sending people to these far off destinations and deep space.

The plan was to come back in four years with a new program, Constellation.

The programs goals were to complete construction of the space station, go back to the moon by 2020 and eventually send astronauts to Mars.

And with all that, NASA would develop a new transportation system.

Plan B is okay.

We'll move over to the Russians, will pay them for seats, tow, launch our astronauts, and that's what we're going to be doing for the next four years.

That didn't quite pan out When former President Barack Obama took office in 2000 and eight, his administration declared Constellation over budget behind schedule and lacking and innovation.

It was not included in the federal budget for 2011 and officially canceled, and Russia those trips can cost more than $90 million per seat.

So onto Plan C, the commercial crew program NASA invest up front and other companies to develop rockets.

And once a rocket is completed, NASA pays per use, which on a space X rocket costs about $55 million per seat, less than one trip on a Russian rocket.

This is a competition.

If you can achieve these goals, will give you more money.

And if you can achieve those goals, will give you even more money to the point where you can launch our astronauts and test missions and will eventually pay you for tickets on your commercial spacecraft.

And what you're looking at now is Space six getting their first space.

Six went through years of designing, testing and failing.

And finally, in 2020 the company was ready to get veteran astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley off the ground.

It's been an incredible journey for Space six, but it hasn't been an easy one.

They've had failure after failure.

In fact, Gwynne Shotwell, the president and CEO of Space six, told business insider.

This is how we got here.

We made these mistakes.

We've learned from them and because of that, we're able to do the really hard thing, which is put a crew on top of a rocket and try to launch them into space.

We're gonna be confident about that because of the mistakes we've made in the past.

Commercial crew vehicles have to be able to safely fly and return.

Four crew members to the space station remained docked at the station for 210 days and protect the crew and bring them back to Earth in case of emergency.

And this is the Falcon nine crew Dragons final major milestone before it's cleared for operational crewed missions.

But a successful launch does not mean a successful test.

We won't be able to make that call until Banken and her earlier back on Earth, and they could stay up there for 110 days.

This is about America's access to space.

A space six can show that it hand in hand with NASA can launch people safely into space than it opens up this huge commercial market for space and one that is distinctly an American commercial market.

That's why this launch was deemed essential even during a pandemic.

We want to see private space stations.

We want to see private experiments launch in the space pharmaceutical drugs developed their new materials developed there.

We want to see all this activity, so it's crucial that we get it going sooner versus later.

Both astronauts have been quarantined since May 13 but this is protocol for every mission.

What's changed because of the co vid 19 pandemic is this.

The launch was closed to the public and hundreds of Space six and NASA employees worked in shifts and wore the necessary PPE to minimize exposure.

Despite the risks, both pandemic related and inherent, NASA appears to be confident that this test will be a success.

It's already announced Basics is first operational launch tentatively set for August 2020 flying four astronauts, three American and one Japanese to the space station for a six month mission and more missions air planned after that.

It's not just about human spaceflight and spiking the football for the United States.