"Addionally, we're creating an open political and economic process, with a small, fixed-price public presale of Urbit address space."
Why does an "open political and economic process" require (or even allow) a "pre-sale of address space" by a central authority?
Our experience is that people rapidly bond with their ship names. Apparently no one is too old to want a secret codename. And human beings of a more grownup character can interact pseudonymously through dignified, impersonal synthetic names -- instead of retarded juvenile handles as on Wikipedia etc, or real names as on Facebook.