>The technology involved is speculative and the physics barriers needed to be surpassed are impossible and not well understood.

we can build with today's tech - classic nuclear reactor plus ion drive - a 3 stage ship reaching 1000km/s, 1200 years to the closest star. Once we get to fusion, we'll be able to improve that speed a small order of magnitude.

>To reach another star by the laws of physics involves many human lifetimes and that’s just the nearest star. >That in itself makes it more likely that we will never be interstellar.

That is exactly what makes it _inter_stellar:) We'll have generations - 10-15 to the nearest star with the current tech mentioned above - of people living their lives on those ships. Living on a planet will become a strange thing for them.

I think in 10-20 years, once launching into LEO becomes cheap with Starship, companies, universities and wealthy individuals will be launching solar + ion drive and nuclear + ion to all the places in the Solar System and some automated probes - beyond.