I dont think anyone here whos paying attention actually believes the "new era" of Elite will launch on its planned date...when something like fleet carriers has been delayed almost..what.. a full year? And even the smallest of updates...UPDATES... break the entire game.
I dont know what is actually going on behind closed doors...but whatever it is...its not good...and its definitely not anything to be "excited" about.
I think it's people like you who need to be paying attention or need an injection of logic. Frontier have made it quite clear numerous times that most of the Elite Dangerous team are now working on the New Era, certainly since Beyond Q4. The investors have been told it's a "refresh of the franchise" while the development time of New Era will be bigger than the original Alpha release, sounds important right? Meanwhile Carriers was one of many bones thrown in with the free for everyone Beyond season and was along with the Ice Planet tech update postponed indefinitely, little development would have been performed during the Beyond season so your "year" delay is just a paper delay. A small team worked on the 2019 series of "minor updates" which has nothing to do with New Era. That's what's going on behind closed doors.