Didn't say anything about Russia, but certainly they did - competitors emulate. So in terms of your SpaceX comment: They are certainly pushing the frontier on

Didn't say anything about Russia, but certainly they did - competitors emulate. So in terms of your SpaceX comment: They are certainly pushing the frontier on the heavy lifting of the decades of research and projects from the national research labs and NASA. The US government doesn't (afaik) have a mission to populate and develop mars - so that opening is available for Elon to pursue.