The lack of progress in the space program from the 70's to Space X is pretty damn suspicious, isn't it? Space X does benefit from computer power that the engineers of the 70's and 80's could only imagine, but the materials don't appear to be more advanced. I mean, they're using stainless steel instead of carbon fiber. I'm sure there's carbon somewhere, and maybe the alloys are more advanced, but if you look at the projects the engineers of the time thought they could do; you have to ask if the holdup was on the engineering end or the political end. Things were consistently getting cancelled when they probably would have worked if there had been a will to push on.
Where would we be now if the Rockwell Star Raker or Project Orion had been built? We'd have colonies all over the solar system, but instead we did welfare spending, and boy did that ever pay off.
