[jsvaughan]

The scale of space is shocking. The fastest man made object, Helios 2 (http://goo.gl/xCow), at 250000kph, would take 17000 years to get to the next nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

This post by Charles Stross is worth a read: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...

To quote: "interstellar travel for human beings is near-as-dammit a non-starter"