By knowing the customers business and needs better than the customer, and be able to convince them that the best product possibly conceivable is not a Frankenstein’s monster put together from “100 ideas gathered from the costumers, prioritised by a PM”, but an opinionated tool created by opinionated people.
Of course you need the right developers for this, not code monkeys or offshore outsourced companies with a time zone and cultural barrier to overcome…
Back in the early 2000's (maybe 2004-2005) I remember buying a can of Coffee from WHSmiths which was self-heating - I think through some exothermic chemical reaction.
It was also really bad as I recall, more like an instant Nescafé than something you'd get in a coffee shop. I didn't repeat the experience.
I think US culture, which I suppose you're from, is on a very lonely path food-wise - people from all over the world enjoy trying and making other culture's dishes, not everything is for everyone, but this American-style "I can't get into anything, ever, which I am not used to" is so unique.
I have the theory that this is due to digitalisation. We are now at the stage where "everybody" needs to know Tech, and everybody now wants to work in the hip Tech companoes, regardless of own technical skills or mindset: Project managers, legal, accounting, etc. nowadays all want to have a say in Tech aspects, and this creates pressure on the actual tech departments of a corporation to create reports and documentation and explain themselves much more than it used to be.
It's a bad situation for tech people to have to deal with the FUD of all other departments because those departments want to present themselves as knowledgeable and contributing to the technical aspects, when they are not able to at all.
Usually these people are financially secured enough to run their stores or bars or cafés as a hobby, to have something to do and meet some people instead of just sitting at home.
I know a guy in Tokyo whose family owns a small plot of land in the 23-ku area and he leased it to some company who built an office tower on it. They get an upper-5-figure USD amount every month for rent.
The guy runs an import streetwear store just for fun, he's in the red all the time but doesn't care.
As a EU citizen, I can't even begin to explain to you how willing I am to trade in possibly not having cutting edge software for the higher living standards and cultural superiority of the EU.
Meh. The Saturn V rocket wasn't a literal god either, nor are the Falcon 9 rockets made out of actual falcons. People have been calling their vessels fanciful and/or aspirational names for centuries, it's fine. Nobody thinks the "unsinkable 2" is actually unsinkable.
Starship seems kind of unique in that it's an extraordinarily utilitarian name compared to most launch system names.[0] It expressly doesn't try to evoke ancient human mythology, birds (which often have their own cultural and mythological ties i.e. Falcon, etc.). And perhaps therein lies the aspirational element of the name. Starship suggests a sort of banality, something so common that there's no point in dressing it up in a fanciful name. That's a dream in itself, though I think it's a given that individual Starship spacecraft will get named once they start carrying humans.
Anyhow, I think the GP's thoughts were along the lines that Starship isn't actually a starship as neither the spacecraft nor the super heavy-lift rocket will ever visit another star. Which is a valid point, but not one that I think matters much either way.
> And perhaps therein lies the aspirational element of the name.
Very possible. It mirrors the naming convention of fictional spaceship in the Culture novel series. A series Musk is a professed admirer of. They even named two of their drone ships after fictional spacecraft from the series.
In that series it is a running gag that other aliens find the Culture's naming convention lacking a certain gravitas. When you have one super weapon you might be tempted to call it "Death Star" or something. But when you have millions you let the warship AIs pick their own names and that is how you end up with a mighty warship named "All Through With This Niceness And Negotiation Stuff" or "Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints". That is a real flex, I would say.
So all in all Musk is familiar with the concept you are talking about here. I can't say for certain if that is going on here or not though. Most likely a Culture spacecraft's AI would roll their eyes over a crude space dingy which can barely reach orbit called "Starship" though. :) So who knows.
There’s a gestalt to the word in the US. If the words are parsed or translated literally, particularly for esl, I can see how it would seem very plain. But speaking as a kid from the American eighties, I don’t think “starship” is banal - anything but! It evokes for me all sorts of wonder and fantasy, probably tied to the media consumed - movies like The Last Starfighter, old Trek reruns, and books and comics.
Starship is both the name of the full rocket and the name of the upper stage, the lower stage is called "super heavy", which is as generic as you can get.
Personally, I still like to call the full rocket BFR, as it was called before being named Starship.
Of course you need the right developers for this, not code monkeys or offshore outsourced companies with a time zone and cultural barrier to overcome…