Originally Posted by Bah Humbug

I said I would come back to this, and now I will.

I think it's likely that meaningful interstellar travel is impossible. For this purpose, "meaningful" means "I can just get in my rocket/ saucer/ ship/ whatever and fly to Alpha Centauri or an even more distant star". Frankly, I don't think meaningful interplanetary travel is possible - we can accomplish briefly putting couple of people on the Moon with the might of a superpower, and that's incredibly close by astronomical standards. We can't even get soil back from Mars (though it might be possible); getting humans there and back is right out. Getting a person to a Jovian moon? No. People make the mistake of thinking "well with progress we could get there, technology is great". No...