DARPA INTENDS to award up to $500,000 in seed money to a group that proves it would do the best job of developing the necessary technologies — whatever they may be — for interstellar travel.

Read it all first, then ask yourself two questions:

How do you know a proposal is "up to snuff?"

Would Heinlein written "Time for the Stars" or Verne written "From the Earth to the Moon" on a DARPA contract?

I want manned interstellar spaceflight, but postulating and solving all the potential problems before "bending tin" doesn't strike me as a plausible approach.