NASA and Elon Musk need each other too much to keep arguing

Five years into the most ambitious partnership between a space agency and a technology company, tensions are running high—but isn’t that to be expected when you’re trying to strap humans to a tube of explosives and hurl them into space?

The US government has not flown humans into orbit since 2011, when the space shuttle was retired, and in 2014 it hired SpaceX and Boeing to build and operate replacement vehicles that will ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.