I never get invited to the good symposia.

Can you believe there was a symposium on the subject of exploring deep space and they were taking suggestions? Can you further believe that it was sponsored by the Pentagon? Yeah, The Pentagon. Am I alone in being uncomfortable with the idea of deep space exploration being brought to you by the same people who gave us Predator unmanned planes and the F-22 Raptor? And while we're at it, Predator? Raptor? When did we become Cobra?

The Pentagon recently earmarked $80 billion dollars to construct a Terror Drome, 
thus ending America's reliance on foreign Dromes (figures sold separately).

Space is big. Good work everybody.

Anyway, the thing's over now and the consensus is that traveling to another star system is going to be like really, really hard, which we already knew. But I'm feeling a little left out and since I didn't get to go, I'd like to offer some suggestions of my own. And by my own, I mean things I've seen on TV. Yeah, TV. Unless science fiction has lied to us, there are plenty of ways to overcome the incomprehensible distances between stars. These guys just aren't looking hard enough. Here's a list of space exploration options in ascending order of implausibility:

Also a problem: Freezer Burn.

The most scientifically plausible (i.e. boring-est) method of interstellar travel is probably going to involve freezing people and then thawing them out decades later when their slow-as-hell ship makes it to the next star system. The obvious flaw to this plan is that the round trip could take a couple hundred years. That's centuries of potential asteroid collisions, power failures and face-huggers. Not only that, but if/when the astronauts do return, they would find that everyone they knew and loved was long dead and that future music is unfamiliar and off-putting. Sort of like the way Auto-Tune sounds to anyone born before 1985.


Also, two-hundred years is a really long time for science. Any discoveries they might make could be way out of date. It would be like Lewis and Clark rolling into D.C. now, pointing west and going: "Hey, the Pacific's that way. Don't eat the poison oak." And then we'd be like: "Psscht, thanks losers, we already figured that out."

Pictured: dumbasses.

Sure, the Hoff's got KITT. MacGyver's
got wormholes. Advantage: Mac.

Not a fan of returning home to find the Earth populated by super-intelligent apes? Fine, maybe Stargates are more your thing. They're basically a network of magic space doors left behind by aliens who, according to Richard Dean Anderson's documentary series Stargate SG-1, also terraformed thousands of planets and populated them with Canadians. Awesome. The only downside to exploring space via Stargate is that the plan relies on a super-advanced race of aliens leaving one buried under the pyramids for us to find. Not super-likely, but you never know.

The planets the Stargates lead to generally fall into the budget-conscious 'Canadian Zone.'

Matter and anti-matter?

What could possibly go wrong?

Then there's Warp drive. It would get us there pretty quick and while it's fictional, some people are actually working on it. The basic idea is that by compressing the fabric of space you can propel a ship through the void like toothpaste squeezed from the bottom of the tube. All you need is a sufficient energy source like a matter/antimatter reaction or a black hole or something. Simple right? Of course nobody knows how to build a warp core and on Star Trek they tend to explode with the force of a thousand suns, but once we work out the technical details we'll be ready to boldly split some infinitives.

See? Lot's of options open, so get cracking science. What's that? Where are we going to find the money? Gee, I don't know, if only there was some area of human endeavor that soaked up vast amounts of resources but doesn't really make the world a better place...

Anyone got any ideas?

This doesn't say 'tremble in fear' so much
as 'you forgot to stop at the store.'

Well, I can't think of everything, however I would like to propose that we hold a symposium on the name Milky Way. I know, right? Why do we have to call our galaxy the Milky Way? It's like we're begging the Andromeda galaxy to come and kick our ass. I mean, I know that someone thousands of years ago looked up and said: "kinda looks like milk," but could we maybe come up with something a little more intimidating? Someday aliens from another galaxy are going to roll in and ask: "What do you call this place?" And we're going to have to explain that it's named after a substance we squeeze out of mammal teats. And then we're going to have to explain what mammals and teats are. It's going to be a whole thing.

I suggest 'Galacticus Prime.' The '-us' on the end makes it sound sciencey
 and adding 'prime' just makes it sound cool.