It's been 62 years since the first spaceflight. There are currently six people in space.

62 years after the first flight, world-wide air travel numbered a billion passenger-miles per day.

So, pardon me, but the pessimism about space progress is fairly justified.

62 years after the first flight would have been 1845. The Montgolfier brothers flew in a balloon in 1783.

It's entirely possible that chemical rockets will turn out to be the "hot air balloon" of space travel. Whether this perspective increases or decreases your pessimism is up to you.

We wouldn't have many passenger-miles in air travel either, if we threw away the airplane after a single flight. Or even part of the airplane.

Hence the focus on reusability by SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Many people overestimate the environmental impact of air travel.

It's "only" about 2% of global energy consumption. Not nothing, but also not that significant. There are much bigger energy wasters that can be targeted.

It's the other way around unfortunately, people underestimate it: The effect of air travel on global warming is much higher, due to emissions effects in the upper atmosphere. Eg WP says 'Emissions weighting factor (EWFs) i.e., the factor by which aviation CO2 emissions should be multiplied to get the CO2-equivalent emissions for annual fleet average conditions is in the range 1.3–2.9'

And air travel is growing at a steep rate because air travel has gotten so cheap and big populations in developing countries take up air travel.

This mentality predates HN.

“No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.” Rob Malda, on the iPod at its release in 2001.

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257

All it needs is a McKayla Maroney "not impressed" meme and it'd be complete.

Random person with no creds here. I’m not impressed.