A very simple idea, but one that definitely could solve some problems! Simple problem solvers are my favorite!

"It'll hold us over until people get there, at least."

Which will be about a hundred years, probably. Seriously, once GW is outta office, Nasa's going to be going right back to the "Space is for us and robots only." With a heavy emphasis on the latter party. Seriously, if Obama gets in (god forbid) he'll probably cut Nasa's budget and give everyone a 50 cent tax credit. And I doubt that McCain would push space either, even if he didn't completely cut their already almost nonexistant budget.

Why doesn't some rich mofo tell the rest of the world to suck off and go ahead and build a nuclear pulse ship? Our society just doesn't give a damn about space. Forget the fact that we're rapidly heading towards carrying capacity for the planet and depleting all of our easily accessible resources. Forget the fact that our race is just another meaningless bunch of monkeys as long as we're stuck on this one mudball. People don't care about that. And Nasa doesn't care about making space travel cheaper, making it faster. They're content to keep on sending bare bones robotic packages for paltry scraps of scientific knowledge atop stone age glorified fire crackers. When we could be cruising around at cee fractional speeds dragging truly massive payloads and harvesting a resource and mineral wealth which makes what we have on this planet look like a beggar's dinner.

Oh well. At least everyone can die depressed knowing that their crappy race will continue to molder away on this sad little planet for a couple thousand more years.