Mr. Obama's 2010 budget proposal for NASA asks for $18 billion over five years for fueling spacecraft in orbit, new types of engines to accelerate spacecraft through space and robotic factories that could churn soil on the Moon - and eventually Mars - into rocket fuel.

A space elevator made of a carbon nanotubes composite ribbon anchored to an offshore sea platform would stretch to a small counterweight approximately 62,000 miles (100,000 km) into space.

"Nuclear thermal rockets, or NTRs for short, are rocket engines that utilize a nuclear fission reactor to heat propellant instead of igniting combustible propellants."

There was another place for life to flourish and the Voyager found it "The identical Voyager spacecraft are three-axis stabilized systems that use celestial or gyro referenced attitude control to maintain pointing of the high-gain antennas toward Earth."

LISA will create an upheaval in scientific knowledge "The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a proposed space mission concept designed to detect and accurately measure gravitational waves[3] - tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time - from astronomical sources. The LISA Project has now evolved into eLISA (Evolved Laser Interferometer Space Antenna). The project is currently a collaboration of the self-funded and independent eLISA consortium. [4] The LISA project was previously a joint effort between the United States space agency NASA and the European Space Agency ESA. However, on April 8, 2011, NASA announced that it would likely be unable to continue its LISA partnership with the European Space Agency,[5] due to funding limitations. [6] ESA has therefore revised the mission's concept to fit into a European-only cost envelope. Currently the project is undergoing the selection process for one of the next large ESA mission. [7]"

Overview of chapter 6 on the Chemical Rockets "Future of Space Travel: To the Stars Unlike conventional chemical rockets which use Newton's third law of motion, solar sails take advantage of radiation pressure from stars. Kaku believes that after sending a gigantic solar sail into orbit, one could install lasers on the moon, which would hit the sail and give it extra momentum. Another alternative is to send thousands of nanoships, of which only a few would reach their destination. "Once arriving on a nearby moon, they could create a factory to make unlimited copies of themselves," says Kaku. Nanoships would require very little fuel to accelerate. They could visit the stellar neighborhood by floating on the magnetic fields of other planets."

Here are the trends in the Space chapter "Future of Space Travel Near Future: Landing on an Asteroid, Landing on a Moon of Mars, Return to the Moon, Permanent Moon Base Midcentury: Mission to Mars, Space Tourism Far Future: Space Elevator, Starships, Nanoships"