Like the idiot wokesters who want to change the names of things because someone in the past may have had views or done things they disagree with. They're standing on the shoulders of giants, and all they can do is squat to drop a deuce instead of striving to reach even higher.
-Back when men were MEN, they went out and tried stuff. It didn’t always work, but at least they had balls. Now, bipeds who pretend to be MEN but aren’t just snarkily ask “what could possibly go wrong?”-
The 1950’s were the golden age of jets. Every year they came out with a couple of new jet fighters. Not only did they built them, they deployed them. They just went out and tried stuff.
Jet Fighters 1950’s
Fighter # Built
FH-1 Phantom 62
F2 Banshee 895
F3D Skyknight 237
F9F Panther 1327
F94 Starfire 800
F-80 Shooting Star 6,557
F-84 ThunderJet 7,524
F-86 Saber 7,800
F-89 Scorpion 1050
F-100 Super Saber 2300
F-101 Voodoo 180
F-102 Delta Dagger 1000
F-104 Star Fighter 1127
F-105 Thunderchief 833
F-106 Delta Dart 342
FJ-2/FJ-3 Fury 732
A4 Skyhawk 2960
F-4 Phantom 5195
F-5 Tiger 1600
F-6 Skyray 422
A-7 Corsair 1545
F-8 Crusader 1219
Smiling like a Cheshire cat...
Look at what happens today when people try to stretch the current limits: Musk test launches the largest rocket known to man and it (expectedly) fails. Even the folks around here start Pooh Pooh the man and the process.
There is no way I would test anything in public these days. The world expects perfection, every time, all the time—and the people setting those expectations have mostly never accomplished anything on their own. Who needs that?
The dreamers and the engineers ARE out there. They just fail in private these days.