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That doesn't make everything possible. You still have to judge each project on its merits. Going to the Moon was extraordinary, but we haven't been back since. You would have been dead wrong if you'd predicted in 1969 that we would be living on Mars by now. It works both ways. In terms of transportation, technology has not fundamentally changed in 50 years: cars, trains, aeroplanes and space travel are much as they were in 1970.mfb said:You think going to the Moon wasn't been called fantasy in 1890? People called the idea of airplanes pure fantasy at that time. Do you want to repeat that mistake?
That's not true at all. Space travel, AI and robotics are three that have done nothing like what was expected of them 40-50 years ago. These have proved tough to develop. And supersonic commercial air travel has come and gone.mfb said:80 years is a very long timespan for technological progress. So long that our actual achievements usually surpass even optimistic expectations.
The project isn't poorly - not yet, anyway. That's the planned timescale, if all goes well. The new line across London (Crossrail) is struggling and has been going for 15-18 years now.mfb said:Some project in the UK being poorly done isn't changing that.
The point about Mars is not so much technology as logistics and economics. Those cannot be magicked away by some technological innovation. We could definitely go to Mars and back if we really wanted to, but building a civilisation there is not logistically or economically viable.