"This is why Superman works alone...!"

Our next story; 'New Findings about the Seventh Planet...'

You do. All of 'you' do. There is no 'master' Universe we can use as some absolute frame of reference, any more then there is for space. Theirs is just as real and valid to them, as what you observe is to you. Only events and history of them are different, from the infinitesimal to the radical.

"...then what determines which universe "path" my consciousness takes?"

If so, they'll be laughing from Tau Ceti...

They'd probably go with a CG newsreader head. For their purposes, it's easier to to tweak, change and improve, than hardware...

And of course the stargate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, which wasn't meant to be a drug trip, and yet...

"There's not enough comonality between the the two destinations to use the Moon as a "practice run". "

"It takes 2 YEARS to reach Mars!"

(oops)

Which doesn't change the fact that every government agency is probably going to take a budgetary hit in the near future. Even the relatively small ones.

"I also said elsewhere in this thread that there needs to be a way to isolate NASA from political and budgetary whims..."

"It takes 2 YEARS to reach Mars!"

"The point is not whether SETI has produced something of scientific/practical value, it's that it could. "

Money. And the unwillingness to spend it. That's why it hasn't happened sooner...and we didn't have anything like today's debt then, either. It's still not a done deal (and we don't need a BFR like the Space Launch System to do it, either...it will, if anything, suck away developmental money)

"I have to see if it's available on DVD."

That which became the International Space Station also began with Reagan:

"I wonder what Richard Feynman thought of Altered States..."

I think the first time I ever heard of sensory deprivation tanks (I knew well of John Lilly at this time, but only his dolphin work) was in the TV movie that kicked off the original 'Hawaii Five-O.'

I don't know if you can call it 'investing,' but we (that is, NASA) will be paying Russia for access to ISS (and at a greater seat price than civilian tourists pay), until one or more of the four CCDev partners* have operational orbital manned spacecraft.