Try to imagine what we need to define and the steps we need to take in order to commence a significant and sustained move out into the universe: We need advanced radiation shielding, new spacesuits, new power systems, new spacecraft designs (Earth orbiters and interplanetary), new propulsion systems (both space and atmospheric), collision avoidance systems, new communications systems, artificial gravity (real life rather than Star Trek but better than rotation), impact protection systems, new space station designs, a vacuum cleaner to clean up the orbital junkyard we have above us, a whole range of new protocols, and all the operational elements designed from scratch without alluding to any other Space program in anything more than a superficial way. We need the next, or first, generation in all of this.
      As I said on the H3 literature page, the goals in this book are more ambitious than any agency that has come before it, but we don't toddle off into a world of fantasy imagination; so in other words there is NO warp speed or slipstreams or tractor beams, phasers, and photon torpedoes in this picture. There is just plain vanilla technology that does not require us to rewrite the laws of physics.
      The book is pronounced t-t-k, o-t-k, tiks and miks. About 144,000 words.