Having seen a project on a smaller scale but equally wasteful going through tons of work and huge costs only for the end user to go “but it’s more practical to

Having seen a project on a smaller scale but equally wasteful going through tons of work and huge costs only for the end user to go “but it’s more practical to use my phone”, I would say that this is in no way overly cynical, it’s very accurate criticism. We all grew up with scifi and would love to see cool stuff like lightsabers and hoverboards even if they aren’t practical, but there’s a reason we don’t want government funds wasted on that, even if the politicians and project managers did “see this really cool show where a soldier on a hover board rode in and saved the day with his lightsaber” It’s not lack of imagination, it’s a realistic focus on the problems that this claims to solve, which are much better solved with more straight forward means.