@Savant74: Lead isn't the cure-all for all forms of ionizing radiation (or Kryptonian peeping toms). Lighter elements, particularly hydrogen are preferred in this instance, which is why the hydrogen-rich molecules of materials like paraffin and polyethylene have to be part of your planning.

Meg, a shark...

@commentotron: I once saw a 1963 Mercury Comet that burned rubber pretty good...

@hwilam: Damn, late again...

Now if only he'd properly drawn the damn tail flukes correctly horizontal, instead of shark-like vertical...

@TmsT:

@MagImpalor is a god damn spy.:

@Pyroninja43: First, space colonization itself isn't NASA's job.

@Graviton1066: That's a lot of trouble, presumably just to be in the Moon's 'shallower gravity well.' (and you still have to get there, to do anything) Earth's is deeper, but fuel resources are more plentiful here, and cheap. The cost of fuel isn't what makes space flight expensive. Assembling/testing/staging flights…

@phoghat: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration will not disappear anytime soon. But it will change. It will have to, like it or not.

@Vundal: No one is going to Mars in that time frame. Not the US, nor China, Russia, India, Japan, Brazil, or anyone else that's been prematurely painted as the new space superpower.

@3in1Doctor: 'Race to the Moon against the Soviets in the 60's?'

I submit they're not talking about it, because NASA has plenty on its plate right now, without the (undeserved) 'giggle-factor' that comes with serious talk about starships...

@warpped655: And I have to add the classic Woody Allen quote on the matter:

Robert Sawyer's novel 'Starplex' suggests hat spiral galactic structure is entirely an artifact of intelligence (all would be ellipticals, otherwise), and done for nothing more than aesthetics.

@Arryma: Some guys already have nurse fetishes.

@Gïmmï Mørgäikköŋëŋ: I'm sure there are ugly Vulcan women too.

@CParis: 2001 + LSD.

@Arafelis: Oh, there's more that you can do:

@Michael Interbartolo III: So, you don't see a conceptual difference between slowing reproducion, and elminating people just for the crime of...living too long?