<em>The Atlantic Daily</em>: Elon Musk Comes Within 20 Minutes of History

1. This is an unprecedented moment in American spaceflight history.

“NASA has outsourced perhaps its most consequential task: delivering human beings beyond the boundary that separates us from the rest of the universe, and then bringing them home. And it has given the job not to a fellow spacefaring nation, but to a domestic contractor that has been flying rockets to orbit for just over a decade.”

2. SpaceX is running the show from its own mission control, but NASA will still be in the loop.

“Although SpaceX engineers are at the controls, NASA personnel will be standing over their shoulders, as they have been throughout this years-long effort to get off the ground. The agency has set the rules for keeping the astronauts safe from start to finish, and the buck stops with the NASA administrator, not SpaceX’s CEO.”

3. The two astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, are seasoned pros.

And they’re best friends. This’ll be their first mission together. Their wives are both astronauts as well. (If you were wondering: It’s tougher to be the one watching the launch than the one on the rocket, they told Marina.)

4. The SpaceX capsule they’re flying in looks a lot sleeker than the space shuttle’s.

The interior of the capsule is black and white, with clean lines and cushy seats. A triptych of touch screens, compatible with spacesuit gloves, displays important information. … Hurley estimates that the SpaceX capsule has about 30 manual switches and circuit breakers, compared with the shuttle’s 2,000.

One question, answered: Can I go to the dentist?

Joe Pinsker posed to a few experts the question you might’ve been asking yourself in the bathroom mirror. Here’s what he found:

If you have an urgent dental problem, yes. If you have a routine cleaning coming up, that’s a tougher call. The experts were not thrilled about the fact that patients can’t wear a mask while someone is fiddling around with their mouth, but had confidence in dentists’ procedures for minimizing the risk of infections of any kind. This one seems like it could go either way, so perhaps the deciding factor is how long you’re comfortable postponing your cleaning.

What to read if … you just want practical advice:

What to read if … you’d like to read about something—anything—other than the coronavirus:

What is a “wine mom”? It depends on whom you ask, Ashley Fetters reports: “The wine mom is either a beleaguered but sympathetic figure, or a subtly sinister one.”

View all of our stories related to the coronavirus outbreak here. Did you get a pandemic puppy? Are you actively looking for one right now? Tell us about your experience.

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Caroline Mimbs Nyce is a senior associate editor at The Atlantic.