NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth

[Baclava]

19. The stars? fantasy dreams - we can't even get to low earth orbit without Russia's help!

The US space program is in shambles - it'll be 50 years before they do anything meaningful with manned flight, if then.
Humans are just too expensive a cargo and too fragile for long deep space flights. Unless we genetically engineer some resistant to radiation.

Michael Crichton once wrote that if you had told a physicist in 1899 that within a hundred years humankind, would – among other wonders (nukes, commercial airlines) – “travel to the moon and then lose interest . . . the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad”

Robots will rule space for the next 1000 years, bet on it.