Private boats delay SpaceX Dragon Recovery
Channel: Sean Anderson
Date: 2020-08-02

NASA and SpaceX target astronaut disembarkment within 60 minutes of splashdown under nominal conditions. This inaugural Space X crewed mission would have come in well under that except for two delays. Firstly, initial capsule recovery was delayed by a large flotilla of personal pleasure vessels which were WAY too close to the floating capsule. These boaters seemed more interested in slowing operations and in making some kind of asinine political statement supporting anti-science advocates rather than truly celebrating space exploration (and inducing SpaceX to crop their video feed to exclude said vessels and statements).  Once that delay was surmounted, the hatch opening was delayed an additional ~25 minutes due to elevated levels of dinitrogen tetroxide (more typically referred to as nitrogen tetroxide or NTO by NASA and SpaceX folks) which had to be purged prior to hatch unsealing.  These potentially quite problematic volatile gasses are but one of the reasons folks need to steer well clear of such operations.