Tyrannical on 06 April 2009
I don't think a permanent outpost to Mars is feasible without nuclear propulsion, and we gave that up in the 1960s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
Yet, today, America's leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these great powers [Russia, Germany, and Japan] to ruin -- from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting new 'crusades,' to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries where Americans have never fought before. We are piling up the kind of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.
— Pat Buchanan – A Republic, Not an Empire
