That was an amazing video Nick. You have to love a nation that can support a presumably 30 minute TV show concerning such a engineering based challenge. A spinning top that runs for nearly 19 minutes! That is an amazing piece of skill.
I don’t think it was a fair comparison of design issues though. I suspect problem with the aerospace engineers top was execution, not design. With the machine shop top being produced by machinists with 30+ years of experience, I suspect it was just made better. What I would love to see is a design by the engineers produced by those machinists. I suspect it would outperform what each group was able to produce individually.
Maybe we should have such a competition at the space?