I was thinking this while watching the SpaceX flight get scrubbed for the third time in as many days.
I don’t know if it was the stream I happened to be watching, but it was just a heavy heavy circle jerk about how part of the goal of Starship is to have “30 minutes” to anywhere on earth by going suborbital.
But it struck me that business relies on consistency. Flights leaving on time, arriving on time. If I have a conference in Hong Kong, am I going to wait three days for the perfect launch conditions because my sub-orbital flight launch is delayed by a bad cloud somewhere in the launch zone?
Until orbital and suborbital launches ae robust enough to happen like clockwork in ANY weather condition, it’ll never be popular enough to be feasible.
Except a steam engine is a poor comparison since it is one of the most brilliant and efficient inventions ever. Most forms of energy generation (including nuclear power) are completely and utterly reliant on generating steam power.
You reduce my argument to silly nonsense when you conflate my scientifically sound concern over useless displays of masculinity disguised inside the carcass of space exploration dreams with being against any new form of technology just because it is unnatural and new and thus bad… which by the way is not what “Luddites” believed at all, the common understanding of the term does the same exact thing you just did to a much more nuanced viewpoint.