Honestly of very little significance to the typical individual. It isn't going to pay my bills or provide for my kids. It does nothing for people suffering war and genocide. Nothing for poverty, access to health care and education. Nothing for the biggest threats facing our civilization.
It is still a remarkable technical achievement and I think the people who have designed and built these systems deserve some celebration for their accomplishments. It has the potential to lower costs and increase the capacity for greater commercialization, militarization and exploration of space.
I think the extent you see that as something positive is subject to your faith in humanity. I tend to think technologies connection to social progress is a three steps forward, two steps back sort of thing. We have certainly made gains in my lifetime but we could have gone a lot further.
Your posts reminds me of the building of the first transcontinental railroad. It had many fits and starts, and people thought it would take decades to pay off.
But just as soon as it was completed, it changed everything overnight.
The payload is so big it will be a pretty dramatic phase transition for almost everything space related, assuming theres not some horrible flaw hidden away somewhere.
Quite bizarre how some people genuinely think he's just some guy who allocates capital. Or rich dad or whatever. I guess his dad was probably rich but that's clearly not enough.
SpaceX are not building a transcontinental railroad. I think that is a false equivalence.
An operational Starship should be very impactful on space exploration but it won't be shipping cattle back from Mars. There is a difficult to discern line between reality and bullshit that Musk likes to blur. The "vision" stuff is there to hype up the troops and investors. You don't need to swallow it to appreciate the technology. It isn't narrow minded to reject stuff that just doesn't add up. The scales, time, distance, energy, investment involved in space colonization are incomparable to settling the USA. The railroad was bringing people to a land that was already successfully settled by neolithic peoples tens of thousands of years earlier.
It is still a remarkable technical achievement and I think the people who have designed and built these systems deserve some celebration for their accomplishments. It has the potential to lower costs and increase the capacity for greater commercialization, militarization and exploration of space.
I think the extent you see that as something positive is subject to your faith in humanity. I tend to think technologies connection to social progress is a three steps forward, two steps back sort of thing. We have certainly made gains in my lifetime but we could have gone a lot further.