Edicius

My opinion on this. 1) Stick with what you are doing now and finished it. NASA should tell politics hand off, you give us budget and general direction for x years then sit back and let us work with it. yeah i now dream 2) More material research in condition of microgravity or freefall. Swallow price, build smelter in orbit or as modul to ISS, then just keep sending fresh (5ton + return capsule) prepared sample (cca 0.5kg), smelted it and return to earth to study. Concentrate on advanced material for supercondactor at room temperature, skin of return vehicle (high temperature, high resistance, high tensil...), nozle, combustion chamber, etc.

You just need to be keep it safe for 500 or 600 years. After that time you have: a) reliable surface-space transport, space infrastructure. So take nuclear 'waste' to orbit, reprocess or fire to sun. humanity is still bound to planet, depleted part or most fossil fuels. Nuclear 'waste' is valuable resource again for reprocesing. Just my opinion for this matter.