Neil deGrasse Tyson admits that he’s not very good at predicting the future, but his claim that SpaceX will never lead the space frontier is well-founded. As he puts it, government organizations like NASA are better suited for long-term projects and making technological advancements, whereas private companies like SpaceX are better suited for doing the simpler things like transporting cargo to and from the International Space Station. 

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the most ubiquitous presence in popular science these days. Coming off of a successful reboot of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, he started a new television show (called StarTalk, based on a long time radio show and podcast of his), he hosts panels and Pluto brunches at the Hayden Planetarium inside New York’s Museum of Natural History, and he’s even been on — surprise — his old pal Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. He’s the kind of guy you could talk for hours with about basically any topic in the universe. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have that kind of time. In advance of a pair of upcoming live shows in New York, I had 15 minutes to speak to him by phone. Turns out, that’s still enough time to cover the creation of the iPhone, our delusions of space travel, and some of the social injustices astronomy is finally owning up to. Neil deGrasse Tyson: I’m not good at predicting the future, and my evidence of that was having looked at Star Trek in its original run and saying, okay, warp drive, sure. Photon torpedoes, I was good with that. And then I was completely in disbelief that you could walk up to a door and have it open for you. Just by walking up to the door. How does it know he’s there! That would never happen.