Population: 1

Just how wacky can Republican candidates get?  Newt Gingrich has called for a huge ramping up of US space exploration, including a permanent Moon settlement by the end of his second term as President.  I suppose that's possible if the American people get so pissed off at him they load him into a rocket for a one way trip to the Moon.  Or his second term as President is 50 years after the first.  This also brings to mind the old saw about amateurs and logistics.

I Won't Meet You On Tau Ceti VI Next Year.

Science fiction writer Charlie Stross has written an interesting piece on why interstellar colonisation may not be doable. The responses are equally interesting. Frankly I think too many of them hinge on the flawed argument that since we now have X when Y years ago we believed it was impossible or didn't even conceive of then there's no doubt that solution Z will come along and solve everything. It's also amusing that some people can't get the idea that writing about something in a work of science fiction doesn't automatically mean the writer believe's it's actually possible in the real world. As is often the case they seem to place an overemphasis on the "science" part of science fiction.

Given that fusion power has supposedly been a decade away for six decades I don't think I'll hold my breath waiting for a hyperspace drive system to appear.