[shiroiushi]

>People get excited by claims to "go back to the Moon, then Mars, then who knows?", but the truth is that given our current understanding of the world, sending humans on another solar system is theoretically impossible. Just look at those distances: we just can't, period.

1. Colonizing and exploiting the resources of our star system is mostly separate from traveling to other star systems. We can do one and never do the other.

2. It's not impossible at all. It's just an engineering problem: we could build large "generation ships" and send those to other star systems if we really wanted to. No, this isn't the same as traveling to other systems in your lifetime and returning, but it is possible for humans to travel to other stars.

>we should pay fundamental physicists to attempt to revolutionize our understanding of the world (wishing them luck) and spend those resources into something that is actually important for life: preserving life on Earth.

Fundamental physicists can't help you with this project. We already know the fundamental physics we really need for this. The problem is social and economic and governmental. If you want to preserve life on Earth, you have to get humans to live in a way that's more compatible with the biosphere, but humans don't want to do that.

[palata]

> It's just an engineering problem

Famous last words :-)

[shiroiushi]

Sure, it's obviously an enormous challenge and totally beyond our current capabilities, but my point is that it's not at all impossible, it's just a matter of priorities. Humanity could do it if they really wanted to. The physics aren't that hard or in the realm of sci-fi. (I'm not sure the resulting ship would survive, but that's another matter. They'd really need to make many of such ships to make sure at least one survives the trip.) It would require developing significant capabilities for space-based construction of course, which means mining operations in space, manufacturing, etc., none of which we currently possess, so it's not even something that could be done in a decade like the Apollo moonshot, but if humanity really wanted to do this, it could be done in a century I think.

Humanity doesn't really want to do a project like this, however.