"massless"? Is that a funny way of saying "not actually going anywhere"?
Is that a funny way of saying "haw haw politicians hur hur"?
A glance at the link shows that "massless" here means using mass that's already out there, instead of hauling everything up from the Earth's gravity well. Digging a little further, the term appears to have been coined by Mason Peck of Cornell University and formerly Chief Technologist at NASA.
"The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is planning ahead — way ahead. The agency wants you to email ideas for how "the Administration, the private sector, philanthropists, the research community and storytellers" can develop "massless" space exploration and a robust civilization beyond Earth."
This is beautiful.
"We are running out of adventures [...] the mountains have all been climbed, the continents explored, and the romance of sailing away on a tall ship to undiscovered islands is no more. What will fire the imaginations of the next generation?"
http://io9.com/white-house-seeks-advice-on-bootstrapping-a-solar-syst-1647619795