My point is that this flight wasn't $100 out of $1000. It was $999 out of $1000. If the engines burned for a couple of seconds longer, it would have been a stable orbit. But their intended orbit was eccentric and had a low perigee, so that it would reenter after half an orbit.
Are we talking about the same flight I watched today? It made it through re-entry and made a controlled, powered, soft splash down exactly where it was supposed to.
Saying a suborbital flight is a partial orbit is like saying a cessna can partially achieve hypersonic velocities
Starship reached over 26000km/h, it had enough energy to be in orbit if it was in a circular orbit. The orbit was intentionally left eccentric enough that the perigee was within the atmosphere, so that a deorbit burn was not required.
This is a cessna going mach 4.99 and you're being pedantic enough to say it was not hypersonic.
I agree with the rest of what you say though. As fun as it is to watch, Starship is over budget and behind schedule. Elon has over promised (pronounced "lied to get government subsidies") on timelines and capabilities so much that it may jeopardize the Artemis program. Which makes me mad.
Pretend you are running a scam call centre. Wouldn't you like a curated list of known real phone numbers and names of people that are likely to answer their phones because they are used to only getting legitimate calls?
That's what I mean by status quo bias. Just because there are roads now doesn't mean that those are the only option. We have spent a fuckton of money and a fuckton of effort over the last century building these roads. But the problem is that cars don't scale. Self driving or not. So as we continue to spend fucktons of money and effort on transportation, we should allow ourselves to consider all options. Rebuilding all roads to accommodate self driving cars (as the original tweet implies) is probably the worst option. There are options that are better for the economy, better for the environment, and better for people.
Also, I don't think any serious person is suggesting replacing ALL roads with rail. Obviously, roads are an important part of any transit network. It's just that we should not ONLY build roads, and not build ALL roads ONLY for cars.
Building roadways to achieve the current coverage for the entire US was a massive undertaking that required a huge effort over multiple decades. Compared to that, building railways is downright trivial. Let's not forget that self driving trains already exist, but self driving cars don't. People should not let their status quo bias blind them to reality.
That's my point though? Making the decision to drive under the influence and getting stopped by the police are completely separate events. And you only have control over one of them.
None of those are even close to the density of Night City. Tokyo has a density of 6,363 persons/km^2, compared to Night City's density of 65,000 people/km^2.
Also those are 'old' cities. They have historical reasons for increasing density. Night City is a city founded and built by mega corps, represents the 'new' world that the mega corps want to build. My point is that in our world, the type of cities that are being built and our mega corps want, are all suburban spawl.
We are not even going to get dense cities like Night City. Imagine how much worse the cyberpunk dystopia is going to be with a 2.5 hour commute each way from the suburbs along a mega highway.
edit: Point is that its just branding, there's nothing to get. If you think that its funny/clever/whatever, wait until you hear the the company Apple made a computer and called it a Macintosh. Because macintosh is a type of apple. apple, macintosh, nobody gets it seriously?
Also, valves don't make steam. The flow of steam is controlled by valves in whatever machine still runs on steam, which is the actual "joke".
My point is that this flight wasn't $100 out of $1000. It was $999 out of $1000. If the engines burned for a couple of seconds longer, it would have been a stable orbit. But their intended orbit was eccentric and had a low perigee, so that it would reenter after half an orbit.