Fly me to the moon

Two years ago I linked to a story about Stephen Hawking who called for us to expand our manned space exploration. A moon base, followed by manned missions to Mars, followed by--in 300 to 500 years--interstellar travel. He says our very survival as a species is predicated on getting off Earth.

He still believes it. He wants us to have 10 times the NASA budget so that we can get our there and explore. And you know he must be serious about it because he quoted Star Trek ... "to boldly go where no one has gone before."