It is not possible to put something into orbit using a ground launcher alone. An on-board motor is essential at the very least to circularize the trajectory so that the "orbit" does not intersect the surface of the Earth before completing one revolution. And you lost way to much energy in the lower atmosphere (and create incredible heat loads) trying to ram through it at super-orbital speeds (in fact the G-loading from this deceleration alone will probably be prohibitive for humans).

For Earth-surface launches it could provide a replacement for the first stage - get you above 95%-99% of the atmosphere where rocket engines are most efficient and no longer have to fight lower atmosphere air resistance. This might make a single (rocket) stage to orbit system practical.

Neutron discovered in 1932. 2012-1932 = 80 years. Not a century yet. Positrons and pions are both important for medical use, muons and neutrinos are powerful tools for imaging the Earth. So you fail on a number of counts.

And X-ray telescopes in orbit (the Chandra X-Ray Observatory) and gamma ray telescopes in orbit (the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope) and on the ground (the MAGIC-I and II atmospheric imaging Cherenkov telescopes).

But a symbolic act is still ritualistic consumption of the body of Jesus.

Most Protestant churches practice communion also. Theological interpretations of the act differ, but it is still the ritualistic consumption of the body of Jesus in every case.

The six Oriental Orthodox churches* have the best claim to being standard Christianity, in terms of not introducing new innovations not found in the early Christian church. The "ISO standard" of Christianity was formulated with the first three ecumenical councils in AD 325 (or 325 CE), 381, and 431. These three councils essentially define the universal core of Christianity. The Oriental Orthodox churches reject nearly all innovations since that time (including ones accepted by other Eastern Orthodox churches).

*The Coptic, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Syriac, Malankara Orthodox Syrian (India) and the Armenian Orthodox churches.

As long as we are dealing in single word characterizations of a family of complex economic systems, I will grant that this claim is defensible. That is, as long as you acknowledge that socialism as practiced is in fact a type of capitalistic system, and that primitive capitalism or laissez faire have serious defects (the tendency for monopolies to destroy free markets, frequent severe cyclic economic crises, disastrous industrial pollution without regulation, etc.).

A better formulation is that forms of regulated capitalism are the best economic systems ever devised.

No matter how high productivity is, you will still a place to live - physical space isn't being minted by "new tech". And you still need to eat, and will be relying on someone to deliver to you food produced by someone else, again, agricultural automation has its limits. How will someone without a job pay for those two necessities of life? Is someone simply going to mail them a check for doing nothing?

Under current trends, the wealth from the enormous increase in productivity over the last 30 years has gone into the pockets of a small group of executives and the already-rich. It has not been distributed to the masses to make their lives easier - not even to the actual workers with jobs producing the wealth. We have very high un-(and under-)-employment which we are increasingly hearing described as the "new normal" and something that will no go away. These people aren't taking it easy, enjoying life - they are desperate and facing lives of abject poverty and shortened lifespans, while being scorned by a large part of society as "lazy".

Your projections assume we will evolve into a true communist model of society where wealth is not jealously withheld by those who can engineer control of it. How is this going to happen? What we see now is those with power and wealth and engineering new laws to that new sources of wealth, "intellectual property", are controlled by a tiny elite in perpetuity. What we are headed for is Dickensian London with the rich soaring overhead in flying cars.

A key problem with nuclear thermal rockets is that when you consider all technologies on the table they have a fairly small mission space where they are the engines of choice. They have higher thrust than electric rockets, and higher ISPs than chemical rockets, but if high ISP is needed they are poor choices, and if high thrust is needed, ditto. This is one key reason why these systems have never flown - there is no mission requiring them yet identified. Most candidates in the past have been military missions, but none have been compelling.

A fission space propulsion system would be made using highly enriched uranium, and launched cold. By the methods used to measure radioactivity (decays per second), a HEU reactor core definitely qualifies as a "small amount" and in fact would be far, far less hazardous than the plutonium RTGs send up routinely today.