Mankind's Glorious Destiny Among The Stars

It was only recently that I learned that NASA astronauts, upon returning from space, are required to fill out a federal travel voucher.

Upon returning from the Moon—arguably one of the greatest feats of engineering, one that typified the notion that mankind had a glorious destiny ahead of it--Apollo 11 astronauts had to fill out a Customs Declaration.

We stopped going to the Moon. The US will probably not put men on Mars before the Chinese do. We have no flying cars or moonbases.

But we bring our goddamn bureaucratic paperwork with us to the stars.

Right there. That's the thing that's going to cause a war with an interstellar civilization--we are the Vogons.