I don't really want to get into a point-by-point rebuttal with Deks because we're just gonna end up repeating ourselves, but I do just want to touch base on this:
No, its not linear. Technological and scienctific development is EXPONENTIAL.
There is such a thing as 'point of no return' where you reach a 'threshold' of sorts and progression simply doesn't stop anymore. You can't put the proverbial genie back into the bottle
I see no reason to believe that this is true. I certainly believe there's a threshold where further progress becomes a great deal easier to accomplish, but I see no evidence for the idea that there's a point beyond which progress can never stop.
While we're nitpicking things, it's not a lost technology, it's just not being used commercially. The military has plenty of supersonic jets.
Supersonic fighter jets are a different technology from supersonic passenger airliners though.
I mean, yeah, the info is out there in archives, but for practical purposes it is temporarily a lost technology. If there was some sudden pressing need for transporting mass numbers of people at supersonic speeds, the capacity just isn't there: the planes haven't been maintained for twenty years, there are no new ones, organizational memory of how to pilot them is fading due to the length of time since anyone's flown them, etc. Yes, with time and effort the technology can be re-gained based on records and new construction -- but it is, for practical purposes, lost for now.
Considering that Starfleet is NOT a military organisation, I'd say it didn't and it wouldn't.
A military is the organization created and operated by the state whose duty is to defend the state in a time of war and whose members are beholden to a system of courts and laws separate from those that bind the civilian population.
Starfleet is operated by the United Federation of Planets and has the duty of defending the Federation in times of war. Its members are beholden to a system of Starfleet courts-
martial administered by a JAG Corps, with special laws and sentences imposed upon officers and enlisted personnel separate than can be imposed upon civilians. In particular, Starfleet has the legal right to imprison personnel for refusing to obey lawful orders, which is not something your boss can do at the local McDonald's.
Starfleet is a military. Its operational ethos is scientific, diplomatic, and nonviolent whenever possible. But it is still a military. Hence the fighting of wars and hence the courts-
martial.
The new tech introduced by Discovery that was supposed to be "always there" offscreen, mainly the
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/DOT-7 as well as a DOT-7 canonically established in Short Treks as being on the Enterprise from TOS to the movies, also don't make sense if you think about them. Why couldn't a DOT-7 have handled whatever Spock was doing in the radioactive chamber instead of Spock sacrificing himself at the Wrath of Khan ending?
Obviously that first shot the
Reliant got off must have short-circuited the entire DOT computer network!
That, for training ships don't have DOTs so that cadets have to learn to do the job themselves.
