99 pounds of plutonium now on Mars...

We belong in space. We came from stardust and we should return there.

until we find a way to consistantly feed the millions of starving children on this planet

And biology of long-term intergalactic space travel? About as likely as unplugging your refrigerator for thirty days and expecting to eat anything you left in there.

Maybe this sounds insane but - I don't think it really is

some of you obviously dont know how many GREAT and commonly used things we have today came from the space program, let alone the hundreds of thousands it employs.

ever hear of VELCRO?

Velcro is a company that produces the first commercially marketed fabric hook-and-loop fastener,[1] invented in 1948 by the Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral. De Mestral patented Velcro in 1955, subsequently refining and developing its practical manufacture until its commercial introduction in the late 1950s.

Tang is a fruit-flavored drink. Originally formulated by General Foods Corporation food scientist William A. Mitchell[1] in 1957, it was first marketed in powdered form in 1959.[2]

Sales of Tang were poor until NASA used it on John Glenn's Mercury flight,[3] and subsequent Gemini missions.

Since then, it was closely associated with the U.S. manned spaceflight program, leading to the misconception that Tang was invented for the space program.[4][5] The Tang brand is currently owned by Kraft Foods.

The United States stopped producing plutonium-238 in 1988; and since 1993, all of the plutonium-238 used in American spacecraft has been purchased from Russia. In total, 16.5 kilograms have been purchased but Russia is no longer producing plutonium-238 and their own supply is reportedly running low.
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It is estimated that to restart production will cost between $75 million and $90 million over five years.[7] Since the DOE would be responsible for producing the plutonium-238 for NASA, the two agencies want to split the cost of restarting production
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Between 3.3 pounds (1.5 kg) and 4.4 pounds (2.0 kg) would be produced per year to support NASA's robotic science missions, although if future human missions require plutonium-238 then even more would need to be produced.[7] The Advanced Test Reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory and the High Flux Isotope Reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory are both seen as potential producers.

I'm vacationing in the Western U.S., as I do every summer. It's remarkable how many dead and dying trees there are, and how little snow there is in the mountains. I'm also reading a book that describes bison herds 50 miles long and 25 mile wide, back in 1870. Lots of change. What's it going to look like in 2100, when our grandchildren are walking around?

The problems of intergalactic travel are so immense that travel to any system takes 5 times longer than the entire time our species took to evolve!