Why aren't we investing more in space travel and sending more astronauts into orbit? We're way behind in where we should be.

Because there's no need to. There's no real demand for anything in space, and even if there was, as long as it can be done by robots, we're not sending people to do it.

Because the people of the world in general (and the major nation-states in particular - i.e., the U.S, Russia, China, etc.) are too preoccupied with their own present-day little socio-political milieu of international navel-gazing idiocy to really deeply ponder about the ramifications of the global long-term big-picture paradigm-shifting nature of the cosmic milieu we (as at least quasi-sentient beings) find ourselves in.

Let's hope we as a species come to our senses before another era, thousands of years in the future, finally sees the light towards another stellar system's potential home world.

The science is based on the success of nuclear physics - neutron, proton, electron, quarks - and their (un)stable configurations.

Of course, this is the language we've come to know, which confines us to a certain way of looking at the world. Should you propose a new language, like the strings in String Theory or qubits in Information Theory, to see the atomic world somewhat differently, then there are potential possibilities.

John Glenn was killed by Russia.