SpaceX NASA returning human spaceflight to United States today (canceled)
spacex.com
spacex.com
edit: yep, launch scrubbed. Too bad! But better safe than sorry, especially today with a crewed vehicle. Does anybody know if the crew dragon comes with different weather restrictions for LOX loading?
ISS travels at 7.6 km/s. Thats a lot of kms in those few minutes
A miss is much bigger than a mile.
I think they could probably delay a few seconds without too much trouble, but I guess the extra complication of recalculating the rendezvous isn't worth it because most of the time a few seconds won't matter anyway.
However, "shortly" is also relative, and 90 minutes is not long enough to purge all the fuel from the rocket and refuel it with cold oxygen (it took close to an hour today to de-fuel the rocket), so it can't be cycled in that window.
Spin the globe a bit further, and now you can see that Florida no longer intersects with that hoop. If you were to try to launch at that point, your trajectory would form another ring that intersects with the ISS's orbit, but at a different angle. So it would take quite a bit more propellant to change direction once in space.
Now, you also have to launch so that you intercept the ISS when it is at the proper position on that hoop. If, when you reach the hoop the ISS is half way around the world, you won't get to it. (Technically, you can spend some time at a lower orbit, then raise your orbit at the right time, or adjust the amount of time it takes to get to the right height, but again that messes with the timing of everything and fuel usage).
This is normal, actually. It's part of why it normally takes several days from launch to ISS rendezvous. (Another part is that the trajectory is very carefully calculated to not leave the spacecraft on an intercept course with the ISS if anything breaks) And it takes essentially no fuel - 100m/s of closing rate will let you catch up from halfway around the world in 2-3 days.
Though, if you can spend that same amount of time sitting on the ground and get there at roughly the same time, you'd waste less resources sustaining the crew in orbit, as well as reducing the "Ugh, are we there yet??" factor by a decent amount.
It's 100% not sponsored or run by SpaceX, but honestly it's probably doing a better job than a corporate PR side could manage. Fantastic amount of details on everything in their wiki and posts, and friendly people who answer questions happily.
[0] https://reddit.com/r/spacex
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/glwz6n/rspacex_cctc...
but it feels like it is sometimes
Reddit brought a more useful/readable interface, allowed anonymous accounts with no email address, and had a very simple & powerful (if flawed) voting system. This attracted content creators of all kinds, which led to a rapidly growing audience, and it snowballed.
I don't like one company owning all this stuff, but I do love what users in niche subs have created there. With a massive general audience comes better populated niches, excellence riding the coattails of the mediocre. Also, should Condé Nast ever screw the pooch here, plenty of clones are waiting in the wings.
I'm really hoping they don't, because I don't think a replacement coulg gain traction as long as reddit is functioning.
I can't tell you how exited I am to watch America's return to launch capability.
Edit: Disappointed at the scrub, but I know a lot of these weather rules were put in place because of Challenger, so I understand. Looking forward to Saturday!
Perfection.
Wish you the best luck and hope that this will lead to some serious competition. Soyuz is great but we need to do more as species.
Space exploration and exploitation is awesome, but shouldn't the first items on the "do more as species" todo list be about taking care of earth?
And rocket science is only one small part of the overal industrial effort of launching rockets.
In all honesty, that's like saying that Jack the Ripper could work as a surgeon.
Of course robotic missions are better for exploration than manned mission. Manned missions costs so much we could do so many more robotic missions for the same cost. People are absolutely not required in space.
We send people into space because we can and we want. Because we keep separate track of record of things achieved by actual human beings. That's why we list who beat 100m or marathon record even though we have machines to move as around much faster. Because standing a human on a mountain, sea bed, or a piece of rock in space is an important step for us to prove we can command nature around us.
Can you imagine being wrong on that? That people can and are cheaper than robots for certain important aspects? That accomplished space robot makers would disagree that robots are at least universally cheaper - or better in other aspects?
> We send people into space because we can and we want. Because we keep separate track of record of things achieved by actual human beings. That's why we list who beat 100m or marathon record even though we have machines to move as around much faster. Because standing a human on a mountain, sea bed, or a piece of rock in space is an important step for us to prove we can command nature around us.
I suspect you're mixing several significantly different things into one here. Token achievements, like current champion in sport X, are one thing. Genuinely advancing, say, science - like on ISS - is another.
If you are still not convinced, we have sent a robotic missions to almost every larger body in solar system, yet we are excited today we can send two people to LEO. Just look at costs involved...
Humans cannot do anything in space without tools and tools in space is a bunch of electronic signals that are either processed locally or sent to Earth. The things people do in space is either trivia (yeah, have fun with this ball of water in zero-G) or studying behavior of human body and mind in space to be able to send more humans to do the same.
We have learned how to do very complicated things without humans involved. Hovering a craft in Mars atmosphere? Orienting craft with extreme precision? Running complicated manouvers at the ends of solar system?
Look at missions which are only possible because we can send a craft on decades' long journey. If people were necessary we would not be able to do anything of that. Any human mission is limited to short hops from Earth to Moon, maybe Mars, until we advance our science and technology way, way past current level.
Sending people to space isn't really advancing science (except studying how people fare in space). It is another token achievement. There isn't physics we are learning IN ORDER TO or BECAUSE we are sending people to space. Physics is advanced by physicists. There might be some technological advancement necessary to send humans that would not be necessary for robotic missions, that's all, really.
Take a close look at what people in space are doing. Find anything that requires humans in space?
Don't get me wrong. I am all for human presence in space. Just be realistic about why we are doing it.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/servicing/index.ht...
Would it be cheaper to build a replacement scope and launch it instead?
As to Hubble, that is pretty bad example. If people were present with Hubble they would be able to do exactly nothing. Everything was prepared on Earth and only then sent to space.
Also, the cost of servicing mission was almost as much as it would cost to make a copy of Hubble. The cost of servicing mission was reported 250M and the cost of sending Hubble was reported 4.7B but from what I remember most of this was R&D, making software, tools, developing plans, etc. A lot of spare parts for Hubble were already available (it is typical to have copy of everything on Earth for debugging and so on).
Robotic missions have the option of being scrapped and sent again which is not really an option for human missions.
We have all the resources we need here on Earth.
in general, there's a lot of items on the urgent list, there's so much money to go around and you don't want to invest everything in endeavour X only for Y to be worse and catch you by surprise.
so you allocate some budget to secondary research as well. NASA doesn't even burn that much in the grand scheme of things.
Something like that needs to hapen with robotics before we no longer have people who do the undesirable jobs.
There's this movie "Downsizing" about people getting miniaturized and live lavish lives as their material needs get smaller. It's not a very good movie but what stike me in the move was that even in that kind of society they needed to have miniaturized people for the labour that no one wants to do and they had to have slums and so on so that the society works. I find this very realistic because even though we have rich countries and poor countries, we still have to have income gradient everywhere so that some people will do the jobs that others don't want to do.
I don't think that this will go away without eliminating the need for near slave labour.
> The exception to the rule is when referring to the Manned Spaceflight Center (also known as the Manned Spacecraft Center), the predecessor of Johnson Space Center in Houston, or to any other historical program name or official title that included “manned”
There are two alternatives...
1. Non-nuclear hot wars.
2. A single global authority.
Now another pole rises in China and so a return to a "cold war" like system is possible. Personally, I hope we can come to an arms control limitation with China. In 20-30 years, even force parity will be charity on their part.
That's solely because the USSR collapsed and Russia is only a regional power, not a superpower. Russia has a small, weak, backwards economy that is of modest global consequence. It severely limits their capabilities. Russia's position on the global stage is still eroding. Had the USSR somehow survived and continued to this day, the Cold War would not have ended. Putin as an authoritarian dictator-for-life is unable to push his view of how things should be, onto very much of the rest of the world. Putin is boxed in, contained, by Russia's various weaknesses.
The contrast could hardly be greater with China, which is clearly going to be far beyond anything the USSR ever accomplished in most every sense (from financial/economy to technology to military to global influence).
China under Xi has chosen an aggressive authoritarianism domestically and a so-called Wolf Warrior policy internationally. They continue to push forward ever faster in those directions, rather than turning back. The fundamentally conflicting world-views, democracy vs dictatorship, market economies vs arbitrary command economy, liberal vs regressive, human rights vs lack of human rights, is why we're entering cold war round two. China's position under Xi on nearly everything is fundamentally incompatible with the rest of the world continuing to make liberal progress. Something has to give when those two visions meet, and that thing will guarantee a new cold war that will split the planet in half.
Go down the long list of liberal ideas & topics, and look at where China stands, and then consider where the world should ideally stand. China stands opposite nearly every liberal idea you can name. There's your cold war, and nothing can stop it short of China resuming the brief period of modest liberalization they underwent before Xi took over - or the world giving up all the liberal progress it has made post WW2.
EDIT: I spoke about that we had a regression, I meant that NASA lost a capability and just got it back.
Crew Dragon is not visually BIGGER than a Saturn V, but it is in a lot of ways a firmer footstep into space than we've ever taken before. SpaceX's program isn't going to dry up as soon as the cold war is over, and we stop devoting 5% of GDP to beating the Soviets. This is for real.
Soyuz is $60m per passenger I think? Are they saying dragon would be $6m per passenger per launch? I find that hard to believe...
I was directly comparing to the Shuttle, which cost more like $450mm per launch.
And yeah, maybe Crew Dragon won't drop to $6mm, but Starship (next) pretty plausibly could, if it works.
This isn't about cost, it's about privatizing space the same way the internet was privatized. Take technology developed in the public sector and allow the private sector to take it.
With the privatization of space, you will get both the same upsides and downsides of privatization.
The only difference between the past, where NASA paid private contractors to build Apollo and the Shuttle is now they are paying a private contractor (SpaceX) but SpaceX gets to sell the tech for others to use besides the government.
Just wait till you see Starship.
60 years ago was 1960.
There were no space stations to dock with.
If your parents were American: no Americans had been in space.
But most importantly rockets were not reusable. That is why this has never been done before.
Very! I couldn't sleep last night; I haven't had this feeling since i was at the Mars Desert Research Station, and Falcon Heavy launch before that!
Its kind of bitter sweet as I'd prefer to be at Hawthorne HQ or the Texas launch facility for this, though. The Cape would be even better, but still, I wanted to see this with the crew(s) so much.
I was never really excited about space shuttle launches when I was kid. After the challenger disaster (i was in middle school at the time and remember my science teacher in tears), I just didn't care about space at all.
But something happened watching those two falcon boosters land... i don't know, i got real emotional. Yes, I'm excited.
Wonder if reliability of virtualized controls surpasses the one of dedicated hardware though.
I suspect one of the reasons Apollo computers were all built with just one type of logical chip is the ability to replace faulty parts - one just need a single type of replacement. If for some reason touchscreen malfunctions, what options are left for the crew?
First, the spacecraft is I believe fully automated. While there is the ability to pilot the craft manually using onboard controls, my understanding is that is already considered a backup or unusual scenario.
As far as the touchscreens themselves, my understanding is there are four touchscreens total, and each can represent / control every aspect of the vehicle. So if a single touchscreen fails, the other 3 provide redundant access to necessary controls.
Finally, the dragon capsule does have manual (non-touchscreen) joystick controls for the critical flight controls.
So these systems have enough redundancy that a touchscreen failure should absolutely not jeopardize the flight.
Joysticks are better, though some convenient indication is also required (the "screen" part, not the "touch" part). I'm sure the designers saw questions like that; I'm just curious about details.
The Apollo Guidance Computer was built with two types of chips: a 3-input NOR gate and a core memory sense amplifier. The reason to use just one logic chip was because ICs were very new at the time and there was very little reliability information. By standardizing on a small number of components, they could procure enough to determine and maintain quality. (See Journey to the Moon chapter 12.)
Switches can certainly fail, with potentially dire consequences (see the Apollo 14 abort switch failure). I would assume the number of failure modes for touch-based interface hardware are vastly more.
Touch controls are, no doubt, easily reconfigurable, which is probably great for profit margins. The idea of the human spaceflight industry applying "cost down" mentality to crew vehicles scares the heck out of me (and I'm not even flying in them). (I'm thinking about the Boeing MCAS mentality, but for spacecraft...)
The touch screen panel is surely very cool.
Boeing suits look WAY better imo
Not a fan of Boeing suits tbh, it looks a bit like an arts and crafts project.
Boeing suit: http://www.boeing.com/features/2017/01/space-suit-01-17.page
I think it's important to discriminate between what the spacex suits look like in stylized prototypes and actually on people. Take this image for example: https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_uk/news/n/nasa-space/nasa-space...
Non haptic controls in critical systems like cars, planes, and rockets are an insane fad.
Navigation is a fairly fixed function. I doubt these astronauts are going to installing new apps on their way to orbit...
Interestingly offshore sailboat racers (IMOCA 60 class for instance) prefer keyboards and thumb ball mice. They’re not pulling g’s, but they experience some pretty extreme motion from waves.
That's not the case in a space ship. Additionally, piloting a space craft is infinitely more complicated. Just take a look at the Apollo 11 control module[1]. I think having a single place where you receive all your information and react to it is way better than having to memorize the location and function of thousands of physical elements.
[1] https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/apollo-11-3....
If those guys had also space flight experience and could review all the engineering done on the capsule, that would be the way to do it.
Oh, that is exactly what happens.
SpaceX isn't to the point in this endeavor where they should be worrying about making things look "sexy". If there isn't an objective improvement in doing something in a non-flight-tested way then I'd be highly suspicious.
Comparing to Apollo, I can imagine that being able to impose some hierarchy on the controls could be beneficial (rather than having all 566 switches laid out across the cabin), and the reliability is probably better than one dedicated switch per control, since the control can be used on any of the several touch screens.
Apollo 14 nearly failed due to a faulty switch. Apollo 12 was saved by flipping a switch that was not well known. Are there other incidents where the controls were critical? In general it seems like when the astronauts are in a hurry you've probably already got major issues, and being able to find the control out of the hundreds (or thousands) is probably more important than being able to flip it with your eyes closed.
Sci-fi UI/UX was developed in a short time under pressure when movies were being made. The authors did not consider literally anything about the implications such as ergonomics, cost, reliability, discoverability, etc. Literally zero research behind it. It was not an engineering project by any stretch of the meaning.
Sci-fi aesthetic is the cancer of our society propelled by big budget films and cultural impact worldwide. It has absolutely no place in space exploration.
All this is decoration and marketing. Personally, I also hate the new space suit design, it looks like a movie set than those badass suits astronauts used to wear. They screamed of technical prowess, not aesthetics. Emerging aesthetics were absolutely badass: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Tim_Kopr...
SpaceX/NASA are preparing the suiting up process right now. It looks like a low budget bad sci-fi movie: https://i.imgur.com/MzdPwD6.png
To say 'sci-fi aesthetic is the cancer of our society' is empty hyperbole. The sci-fi aesthetic mirrors the age in which we live. Additionally, which sci-fi aesthetic is so ruinous? Is it Star Wars with all it's switch, levers, and knobs? Is it 2001 and Star Trek with display monitors everywhere? Is it Blade Runner or Alien with a decayed future? What is this cancer causing your histrionic invective?
I am also willing to bet, SpaceX UI designers have never even touched this document: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19940023266
We both have limited information.
I assume that the professionals at SpaceX and NASA have prioritized safety and usability, while also introducing a sci-fi vibe. This is a reasonable position.
You, however, take a conspiracy theory (the literal definition) angle that SpaceX have reduced the safety and usability of their module in order to look cooler. Do you see why this is not a reasonable position with the information that we have?
I think that's my main grumpy objection. May be I am just old.
I also found your dismissal as "conspiracy" a low blow. How can I engage in a productive discussion when the other party dismisses your entire proposition as a conspiracy theory - you don't seem to see any issues with that?
Maybe conspiracy theory was too harsh, but I stand by heavily calling you out for hatching this idea with minimal evidence beyond "grumpy objections" to a sci-fi vibe.
You'd also have to ignore the PR benefits, which certainly corresponds to more money down the line.
Or, maybe there isn't much to do manually during this phase, and for the little things there are some classic controls.
Also, judging from the photos, they seem to have their button covers supported by the frame. In 2003, there was an incident when a cosmonaut inadvertently fired RCS thrusters on the Soyuz attached to the station, simultaneously pushing several buttons with his foot while loading the spacecraft with cargo to be returned to Earth, crushing the protective caps that were pressing against the (relatively flimsy) case. The thrusters fired for quite some time until a ground operator noticed it and turned them off remotely. After that, the covers in Soyuz were redesigned to press against the frame. Seems like that incident has been learned from in Crew Dragon as well.
If I remember right, all the important controls are done with buttons and a joystick, while h touch screens are only for informational displays.
I think the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo cool was that the hardware was completely lacking in design: it was as practical as a carburetor and as stylish. And that's why we liked them.
Then there's also the one by SpaceX [1] for those interested. I know that SpaceX usually has two webcasts going during launches; one for the public-friendly chatter and another for the go/nogo technical chatter
I always look for the SpaceX or NASA official links. Don't search for SpaceX on youtube, you'll drown in unofficial garbage from news companies
Astronauts will be using similar for manual piloting demo before docking.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=iss+sim+speedru...
They are not designed so that your average person can just figure out orbital mechanics on the spot while approaching one of the most expensive objects ever created.
Good luck!
Try running it again but focus on zeroing the pitch, roll, and yaw first before moving on to the x, y, z. Once you have rotation under control, zero in your X, Y positional offsets until you are lined up. Finally burn your Z and then slow as you approach, all the while keeping the X, Y, Pitch, Roll, Yaw as close to zero as possible.
The big issue is that fine grain translational motion is nigh impossible while dealing with any type of rotational motion. Once you kill the rotational motion, it's intuitive like using crane-game controls.
Plus they start you at 200m out with no relative movement, so it's pretty easy to just zero out one axis at a time and go from there
I hope they practiced on tablets
Too bad they didn't skin the touchscreen interface to look like LCARS. /s
That was the aim:
https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-crew-dragon-spaces...
The Dragon's interior was also built with that in mind, its less NASA and more Hollywood, throw Ripley and Earth Plushy into the mix and this how you do get regular people into Space [1].
Working on manned space flight is not for me. The stakes are just too high.
The two astronauts along with the Falcon 9 will be docking with the ISS and then returning home. No crew swap is happening, which seems like a waste of energy. I get that SpaceX isn't "operationally certified", but is a crew swap inherently more risky?
I read somewhere that the first 'operational' SpaceX <-> ISS will be in a couple of months.
Now they are flying on its successor capsule which is rated for much longer (iirc up to 110 days of) space operations. This allows NASA to extend the mission and lets the astronauts Hurley and Behnken help out on the ISS which are currently short on people iirc. They received training for this extended mission in the last few month.
A crew swap would require astronauts that are on station to return on the dragon, something they may not have trained for. So to do a swap, you'd probably have to take more than just the two test pilots up since they are likely required to pilot the capsule back down. Taking additional crew on the test flight would certainly be more risky to those additional lives.
Just to be clear, the Falcon 9 is the booster that never gets to orbit. It's not going to the ISS- not moving fast enough to achieve orbit. Just the little Dragon spaceship on the nose of the rocket will get to the ISS.
> No crew swap is happening, which seems like a waste of energy. I get that SpaceX isn't "operationally certified", but is a crew swap inherently more risky?
Believe it or not, they've sent this 7-seat spacecraft to the ISS already (well, the same model) just to verify it could do it. It arrived empty, it went home empty (except for a plushy that stayed behind). The point is that SpaceX is going to be doing this maybe hundreds of times in the future, but the first time, they want to minimize the number of people that could die if something goes wrong.
Remember, this whole test would have been done 6 months ago except that the sister to this spaceship unexpected exploded during a simple ground test. This stuff is dangerous.
eagerly waiting for the launch, though! Wishing luck from India!
A quick search through Wikipedia shows 140+ manned Soyuz launches, and around 20 total for the SpaceX Dragon.
Note those numbers are for the spacecraft, not the booster (the Soyuz platform has both the spacecraft and booster named Soyuz, SpaceX has the Dragon spacecraft on the Falcon 9 booster).
Both the Saturn 5 and Space Shuttle had far fewer unmanned launches than Dragon, before the first manned flight. The Soyuz booster started as an ICBM, and thus has a harder to compare track record. Here's a graphic for the booster family historically: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_R-7_launches
That seems like incredible pessimism to me.
It is pretty different from the 20 Dragons used on CRS.
I expect a decent number of systems were reused or modified, rather than being fully original
I hope for the best too
In a consumer era where almost all naming is done by marketing and void of any soul, it really, really makes me happy to see a little bit growing through the cracks in the concrete.
Culture spaceships have AI "minds" and the mind of a large ship-constructing ship will name its offspring. They tend to have an odd sense of humour, there are plenty of sites with lists of Culture ship names, and Banks wrote footnotes excusing the obvious references to 20th century human culture as matters of translation (e.g. there is an Offensive Unit named "I said I have a big stick" which is a reference to Theodore Roosevelt's "Speak softly and carry a big stick").
https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the...
- Your friendly neighborhood pedant.
The COVID-19 fatality odd is 0.3%, the Dragon-lost odd probably much higher, maybe at around 5%. The Falcon 9 has over 80 starts now, but this is only the 3nd Dragon 2 start, and one of it failed.
Fatality rate is one thing, but being in a small space can cause high concentrations of virus and any health complication in space is a big deal.
A catastrophic failure is definitely a risk, but not sure how its magnitude should diminish our caution when it comes to bringing the virus to the space station (by your calc, it lowers the risk only by 5%).
Heh
Good news!
Very inspiring.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/04/03/photos-astronauts-trai...
I just watched one of the astronauts push buttons on the touch screen, and it's shocking how small the icons on the screen are relative to their fingers. I would not want to try to the hit the right icon while accelerating!
But indeed, the launch is automated and for any the few important manual thing (basically just manual launch abort trigger) they have separate physical controls.
Thanks for thinking of me!
For the first time, Dragon can talk back!
Edit: and for the falcon 9 (non crew) https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/649911main_051612_falcon9_weather_c...
Given what the weather has been like since Sunday I could see it being postponed. I hope the weather holds and gives a window.
It misses the upper level winds, and for the human launch I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that it is missing some weather criteria in the abort recovery zone as well.
Recovery due to an in-flight abort would be difficult in rough seas and weather if they had to be plucked out of the Atlantic.
The aerostructure of the falcon 9 can only withstand so much side loading due to aerodynamic forces and wind before exceeding the operational limits of the rocket (body to keep it all from breaking apart, and the engines working hard to keep them on the correct trajectory).
One of the things that's monitored closely in the launch corridor are the upper atmospheric winds. Specifically the wind sheer in the upper atmosphere. Strong wind isn't typically a problem, but high wind sheer in the upper atmosphere can be problematic.
Additionally, they check the weather in the entire recovery corridor. That is, anywhere that the capsule could end up during an abort. They want to make sure that if the capsule ends up in the ocean, the weather permits recovery operations. An abort and safe splash-down doesn't do us much good if the astronauts then drown because recovery operations are impaired due to weather.
We're putting two lives on this rocket. A small delay is absolutely the right trade-off to reduce risk.
Very emotionally uplifting, I highly recommend watching the feed now if you like space.
Kinda like a Nike ad.
https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink-lat...
edit: part of controlled airflow maybe when coming down in reverse/re-entry?
Previous unmanned Dragon missions take ~1 day to approach and dock but I can't imagine they will subject the astronauts to the same.
It used to take days. Not fun in a tiny capsule like Soyuz, I'd imagine. https://www.engadget.com/2013-03-29-soyuz-cuts-travel-time-t...
It's funny that it takes that long, since they could theoretically make it up there in like half an hour or so. Here's a good overview of what's gonna happen today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr_zfpzGxQQ
On a separate note, it's amazing how Tim has built such a brand in such a short time, I remember when he started out a couple of years ago.
They do a couple orbits gentle approach first because a) it's not a great idea to barrel towards the ISS at speed and b) it gives an opportunity to check for things like "did our solar panels deploy" and "do we need to land because the air is leaking out".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr_zfpzGxQQ
He has lots of great videos including some very well produced content on rocket engine design, starship etc.
The short answer to your question is just over 19 hours until docking, and then I think another 2 hours after that until the hatch opens.
Going to ISS is easy afaik but when are we ever going to try landing on the moon again (don't even talk about Mars).
Given that only 3 nations in history have produce anything that could potentially do it, that statement seems like utter lunacy.
Thus far the sample size is low, but to the extent you can measure it they're equal.
The xEMU suites even more.
I called Elon Musk many years before he was as important as he is today, let's see where Patrick and John end up in a decade or more.
Masks seem like an inexpensive way to reduce risk, the CDC and WHO recommend them. Sure, there are other measures that can reduce transmission, but the lack of masks makes me concerned that other measures are not being taken, perhaps because both Elon Musk and Trump have been downplaying the risk of covid-19 and they are both present today.