[Animats]

> But ‘trust me I have been teaching people to design spacecraft for decades’ doesn’t really count for much when during those decades no new spacecraft designs were actually getting made and launched.

That's an excellent point. Not until Space-X started launching Falcon-9 boosters was there a significant US advance since the Space Shuttle, for which design began in 1969. The Russians are still launching Soyuz. China has been developing and flying new boosters, and is now flying the Long March 7 and 8, with the Long March 9 in development. NASA, though...