“Three…two…one…engine ignited, and we have liftoff of SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket and Dragon.”
On Dec. 15, 2017, Simon Gilroy listened to that countdown as he gazed across a river separating a mass of scientists from the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Titusville, Florida. He was a couple of miles from the site, but as close as you could get without being inside the rocket.