Inventor: Otto Schuller
Patent number: 3139622
Filing date: Apr 17, 1961
Issue date: Jul 1964

The cost of space exploration is a complicated subject; with a 2010 budget of almost $18 billion many argue that money would be better spent right here on the big blue marble for medical research, social programs, finding solutions to poverty, hunger and homelessness. Meanwhile Professor Stephen Hawking is worried about contact with aliens leading to the raiding of planet earth for precious resources and moving on. “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.”  Hawking realizes the need to explore space for the future of humanity but envisages a long-term space exploration project starting with building an experimental base on the moon within 30 years, and devising a new propulsion system to take us on a planetary hunt outside our solar system in 200-500 years.