Why do the presentations of Starship launches come across like an episode of "The Price is Right"?

I just watched the complete Starship 10 mission presentation, and what struck me, was how it didn't really come across as a news broadcast, at all. What came across was a kind of advertisement, a focused and artificial cheerfulness that reminded me of the TV gameshow "The Price is Right", where gameshow participants are selected for their mindless enthusiasm, and their greed. Everyone in the TV audience was dancing and clapping and cheering and smiling just like the game show contestants on The Price is Right. When pieces of the Starship were torn off, the commentator used the term "liberated", as if this were a very good thing, and not a bad thing at all. There were smiling pretty young women interviewed who said how incredibly exciting the mission was, and how fabulously successful it was, and what an incredible job SpaceX was doing. The commentator regularly said how magnificently everything was going. What was particularly striking to me, was, that when the Starship second stage exploded into flames at the end of the mission, the commentator didn't even bat an eyelash, or respond in any way whatsoever. A huge fireball exploded right behind him on the screen, and, it seemed like he didn't even notice it at all, or that it never happened. I found that truly fascinating. I think what we have here is typical Elon Musk, which is to say, pure disinformation. It's quite clear that Elon Musk is making money just by repeatedly blowing the Starship up over and over again. He wants to cut costs by 99.9% on mega-rockets like the Saturn V or the more recent SLS, and is claiming that the fact that he cut costs on medium sized rockets by 30% through partial reusability means that he can do it. Apparently, such a pathetic sales line is compelling to rich investors, since it's working. The rich are hoping they can cash in on space, or visit it on the cheap, and will believe any lie Elon tells them. I don't know if the Starship will ever actually be used for anything, or, it's simply the most recent incarnation of Howard Hughe's Spruce Goose, on steroids, however, I do know that it's quite impossible for Elon Musk to make colonization of space practical with liquid fueled rockets. They simply aren't efficient enough -- too expensive, too unstable, too dangerous. However, at a billion dollars a pop, launching Starships as billion dollar firecrackers is very profitable indeed. So, by God, The Price is Right!

The Hitler-Mannheim recording -- 11 minutes of casual conversation between Adolf Hitler and Marshall Mannheim from 1942.

The real Adolf Hitler quite casually and analytically explaining the rationale for his actions and the reasons for his problems in the invasion of the Soviet Union, in the middle of World War II. Have a listen, there are English subtitles, if you need them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oET1WaG5sFk&t=1s

What the history of energy teaches us about its future

It took 1500 years to fully develop the steam engine, and, the way it's going, it looks like it might indeed take that long to fully develop nuclear power. While nuclear power has existed for almost a century now, it's still a very poorly understood technology, with innumerable problems and enormous expense involved in attempting to develop any meaningful applications.  Sure, we have a wide range of practical applications, but, there's an uncertainty about them all, and immense problems, and, it appears, the full potential of this energy technology is far from being achievable, at this time.  The first applications of steam engines, during the time of the Roman Empire, were just toys.  And, that's the way it stayed, for about 1500 years.   A combination of lack of interest, lack of imagination, and lack of necessary related technologies posed insurmountable obstacles.   People were reasonably content with the way things were, as they usually are, so no one was interested in this big a change to things.  We have entire theoretical conceptions of reality dedicated to the notion that we can't do new things.  Currently, the most obvious example is Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which states that we cannot travel faster than light, making colonization of other Solar Systems virtually impossible.  H-bombs would actually give us enough energy to do this, were it not for Einstein's postulates.   Possibly, governments don't really like the idea of people being able to escape them by travelling to other earth-like planets?  Or, maybe wealthy capitalists find the notion of vastly more efficient energy sources a threat to their current monopolistic powers?  Who knows. Side by side with steam energy, of course, was chemical energy.   And, actually, chemical energy was used to some extent, but, somewhat awkwardly.  All fire is chemical energy, of course, and fire is one of mankind's oldest technologies, far pre-dating our own current species of mankind.  We've had chemical rockets for thousands of years, and, to some extent they were used in warfare, sporadically.   Burning coal as a source of chemical energy became more and more common as human civilization progressed, although it does tend to poison the air badly.    Neither chemical nor steam power can be fully developed as a source of power for engines without high quality iron and steal to build engines with, and related machine tools and machine tooling.  And, of course, the very concept of powered engines has to be developed, first.   Steam engines likely preceded Chemical engines because steam is rather more benign and less destructive than small chemical explosions. So, what does all this have to do with nuclear power?  I think it means that there are many slips twixt the cup and the lip.  Developing new energy technologies involves many, many stages, often entirely new conceptions of reality that are not easy to conceive of, detailed, precise new technologies that no one has ever seen before, or even dreamed of.  And, no one really knows where to look for these. Currently, the Chinese are developing the world's first thorium reactor.  That is very good, because there's a lot more thorium around, than uranium.   Will this lead to a nuclear revolution?  Almost certainly not.  But, it is clearly a step in the right direction.  How about controlled nuclear fusion.?  I would argue this is a dead end.  Trying to build a nuclear fusion source that cannot do any damage, but still produces a lot of energy, simply seems to be a contradiction in terms.   How about nuclear bombs as energy sources and power sources.    This is possible, but, surely these "bombs' could be made less "bomb-like" and more "energy-like".  Couldn't this be explored?  It's a new concept, but, as we've seen, historically, new concepts are fundamental to new energy sources.