Once again: I chose the word fantastical somewhat carefully and think the evidence bears it out. It's not an ambitious cost estimate; it's simply unrealistic.
A), ambitious and unrealistic are not mutually exclusive. It was ambitious and unrealistic to attempt a moon landing in under a decade.
B) Again, I believe fantastical implies a rational person would think it highly improbably. I'm a rational person, but so is Elon Musk; what appears fantastical to me appears ambitious to someone with a better understanding of the situation. I suspect this would apply to you, too.
> A), ambitious and unrealistic are not mutually exclusive. It was ambitious and unrealistic to attempt a moon landing in under a decade.
That's absolutely not true. It was ambitious and totally realistic to attempt a moon landing in 10 years.
Kennedy only selected that goal after von Braun said that it could be done "by 1967/68". He even added an extra two years of padding, just in case von Braun was being optimistic.
Anyone who knew anything about space flight knew that Kennedy's goal was achievable. In fact, some thought that von Braun was gold-plating the program unnecessarily. McDonnell did some engineering studies for landing one man on the moon using Gemini and a Saturn C-3 (about half the payload capacity of a Saturn V).
If 90% of civil engineers would say in 2013 that Elon Musks hyperloop plan was realistic, then it would be where the moon landing was in 1961. But they wouldn't. In comparison to the moon landing, Elon Musk's hyperloop was wildly unrealistic.
"Because consensus" hasn't been terribly great either, thought it is routinely mistaken for one. IMHO fantastical implies that it directly contradicts rationality, not common knowledge.
