Such a fantastic overview. And here we are, instead of building the infrastructure for accelerating solar sails, we're investing the money in AI-pornbots instead :/
AI porn sells, solar sails are a research project at best. There is no money to be made from space flight, only discovery, and unfortunately capitalist forces far outweigh curiosity.
Even the space race wasn't for science but for politically one-upping the others, doubly so because being able to bring a payload into space also demonstrates they can bring a payload anywhere on the world.
