This literally happened with the Foxbat and F-15, but it was the USSR rather than China. It wasn't until a Soviet pilot defected with his jet to Japan that western scientists realized it was a very clunky, basically single use interceptor, not a gen4 air superiority fighter.

Iirc, it's the second largest university in the state now behind UGA, and just became a tier 2 research institution. Believe it or not, it's on the up and up.

RIP SPSU. My dad's still bitter about it and he didn't even go there.

Stop trying to make "Hooty Hoo" happen. It's not going to happen.

Nooo it hurts...

Hopefully a record that will fall in the next few years.

I was talking specifically about European applications. US passenger rail is a disaster regardless of power source for legal, logistical, political, and social reasons. It's really sad. I like having my car as much as any other suburbanite, but I've seen good passenger rail systems around the world, and they're really nice to have.

Exactly. There are several different ratings for hydrogen sources. If it's not "green" (renewable sourced) or "pink" (nuclear sourced), it is precisely what you described. Just a way for hydrocarbon producers to prop up demand for their products a few more years.

You can almost make the case that overhead electrification is too expensive to implement in some places. I'm not totally sold on that math, but I keep hearing there are niche cases for hydrogen.

E: typo

And political / self sufficiency factors are important enough that this future rocket doesn't have to beat F9 or SH at anything really. It just has to be good/ cheap enough to rationalize paying the "made in Europe by Europeans" premium.

If SpaceX's Starship lives up to a fraction of the hype (mainly if it can touchdown safely on Mars' surface), we can have a small city worth of supplies and shelter on the surface before we send the first people. I think your timeline is pretty reasonable.

Just replacing one storage problem with another.

And me in the 00's. These things might as well be fusion powered. They're just 20 years away.

Been there. You point still stands. A new space age is dawning.

Unfortunately, you're off by a factor of about 1000. The graph says we're below $2000 per Kg, not per metric ton (1000 kg). $2000 per ton is just $1 per pound. Lower than commercial air fare.

We'd have entire cities in space already at that rate.

Short answer is yes. There are ways to generate a magnetic field / block some of the solar wind, but they're all scifi right now. Even if we could make an atmosphere Mars could hold onto, it would take multiple lifetimes to complete.