Basically it is the only plausible explanation of the Great Silence in the universe of trillions stars and planets.

Or maybe what they're using for communications is a bit beyond what we have. Keep in mind that modern communications here would be pretty much unintelligible (and undetectable) as recently as 100 years ago. Hell, if we could describe what we use now to someone in WW2, they'd still not be able to receive our signals in all likelihood.

Who cares?

Big picture, you send a Dragon up with ONE crewman on board. When you get up there, the people who need to get down get on the Dragon, it lands.

If you can't manage to rearrange people with just one Dragon, send two.

Which they couldn't.

I'm remembering that the current terrible reactor designs were adopted largely because the American military WANTED more Plutonium.

Umm, no. A reactor that produces meaningful amounts of plutonium is a VERY special case. A civilian reactor produces almost none. Any reactor producing significant amounts of plutonium-239 is meant to do so.

As far as the US military is concerned, producing Pu-239 is a byproduct of...are you ready for this?...a reactor designed specifically to produce Pu-239 in quantity...

Note that Fukushima worked out the way it did because the Japanese anti-nukes wet themselves at the word "nuclear" just like the American anti-nukes. And for all that Fukushima sterilized most of Japan, it only managed to kill ONE person over the span of eight years. Which was about average for a nuke plant. A bit better than wind generators, in other words...

You need to read the book guns, germs and steal

Guns, Germs and Steel. It's about metal, not theft.

A less corrupt Supreme Court could overturn corrupt rulings. It's not like they had very cogent arguments to begin with. Their reasoning on Roe was about as bad as "separate but equal" and should be easy to overturn with competent arguments if you added enough honorable judges (of just about any political leaning.)

Ummm...the ruling that made corporations "people" was NOT Roe-v-Wade, The ruling in question was made in 1906...

We created $2.2T out of nothing, this $2.4T almost compensates for that one.

So, Biden saw this coming, and poofed a couple trillion dollars into existence that would have been straight inflation, but this way he can blame it on a small subset of the working population...

Which means that four Falcon-Heavies could send mission to the Moon slightly larger than an SLS can manage. While being 2/3 reusable (8 of the Falcons, plus the capsule).

Admittedly, the SpaceX version would be expensive - on the order of $400 MILLION! What's that you say? That's only 10% of the cost of an SLS launch??

Note also that Starship is the Lunar lander for the SLS program. Again, for a fraction of the cost of an SLS, and 100% reusable to boot....

And what with NASA throwing a lot of OPM at diverse problems, Congress (who decides who the money is thrown to) is happy (buying votes with OPM is a great way to have a long career in the House or Senate).

In other words, it's a win-win...

Shit ideas don't become good ideas because dumbfucks voted for them.

True enough. So, what makes you think YOUR ideas are good ideas? As opposed, say, to MY good ideas?

Alas, while democracy sucks as a form of government, it sucks LESS than all the other forms we've tried from time to time...

In other words, till you can PROVE that your ideas are better than mine (or anyone else's), you'll just have to deal with the fact that not everyone (probably not even most people) agrees with you.

I'm some regions you are 9 months old when you are born.

You are??? So, which regions are you?

you can predict your fuel costs: zero, every day of every year.

Yes, fuel costs are zero. Of course, generators aren't free, and they'll need maintenance.

And some way to deal with the less-than-ideal situations like, oh, it's been cloudy for a week....

fusion is likely to be dramatically less radioactive than burning coal (which releases radon, etc.)

Yeppers. Burnin g coal releases far more radioactives than fission in normal operation. Hell, over its lifetime, a GW coal plant will release more radioactives than a fission plant even if you assume that something like Chernobyl is "normal" for fission plants.