"Nah, nah, nah, Chill, that isn't what's goin' on. Y'see after the Challenger disaster back in '86, there was like this [huge] backlash against 'exotic technologies', especially in space flight. Congress passed a bunch of laws saying that the FAA can only okay 'verified and standardized propulsion methods'- whatever the hell that means- for commercial and government flights. We superheroes can use whatever we want as long as we register them as 'experimental prototypes', 'cause, like, we're weirdoes and who cares if we blow ourselves up? Of course, with NASA operating on the shoestring that it's got these days, that means that we got this Catch-22 of we can't develop better systems unless the FAA okays new radical designs for real world testing, but the FAA won't okay them for testing because they're not 'verified and standardized propulsion methods'. So that means we got assholes like Dr. Diabolik dropping out of orbit to raid entire cities, and then getting away using Lift Beacon technology, while we're still piddling around with LOX rockets. Y'know, sometimes I think he does that just to piss us off?"