Planes take a long time to design though. As an engineer he should know that. For example my company designs submarines. I know when my company starts designing things for the Navy it is 20 years from concepts till they are built and most of the time we are reusing parts. From scratch has to take longer then that. 40 years isn't that long for planes since they take so long to design and then they stay in commission for years. How many years have the boeing 757s been used? I'm sure the insides will get more updates but the bulk of the plane itself probably won't see much for improvements in 40 years unless the technology to do so is already available today.
Your DS sounds like he is still in school and hasn't worked as an engineer (unless he was one in the air force perviously?) I definitely had much bigger dreams of what we should be able to do and how quickly before I got in the industry and realized just how complicated and long many of these processes are. Now my company work for the government so many private companies that don't need government approval for EVERYTHING could do these things faster but I have become a bit more grounded from my big dreaming days.
As for NASA and where the program is not going. When the rate for unemployment is as high is at is and the debt at record levels do you really think American's will allow the government to spend another several billion on NASA space programs?
The technology is there. We (as a country/world) could engineer almost anything you can imagine... the problem is getting someone to pay for it.
he was annoyed since it was supposedly a visionary picture of planes 40 years from now...
as for NASA - i think a majority of americans would like to see NASA heading back to the moon and beyond.....when president bush announced exactly that a few years ago, there was very positive response...
Obama has pulled back from it...
the space program has continued through booms and busts in the economy...
there are gains from space exploration that are important in other areas of the economy...
When Kennedy set that impossible goal back in 1961 of reaching the moon within that decade, he set in motion a process that advanced technology by leaps and bounds in a very short time...
in the US, nothing has matched that level of advancement since (and the US has been basically standing in one place with the shuttle program - which by the way, was a colossal waste of money,....money that would have been better spent going back to the moon and beyond... )...
anyway....some private people are thinking and dreaming big....and the US space program might ultimately be saved by them..