> /That's/ what "lock in" is, when a "tried-and-true" design element
> persists long after its practical utility no longer exists, simply due
> to habit (and an absence of innovation in that particular design element).
>
> (It's also why NASA's spacesuits on the Space Station still had the same
> boots as the spacesuits designed for the Apollo program thirty-plus
> years prior -- even though no one in a spacesuit on the Space Station
> was ever going to walk in them. . . .)

I didn't know that. I know those Space Shuttle Era Suits are very long
in the tooth and needed replacing 10 to 15 years ago.

> For me, that's a more interesting past-time than tearing apart Beam's
> sci-fi tech using the benefit our nearly-three-quarters-of-a-century of
> technological hindsight.
>
> YMMV, of course.

We have to mentally travel back to the Early 1960s and then follow HBP
into the future history.

For us it's a retro-futuristic science-fantasy setting.

But that doesn't mean we can't go along with it for the sake of the story.

You just have to be flexible and try to see it for what it is.