Never is a strong word. For one, we know nothing of the remote party's biology and medical achievements. In fact we don't even know whether the remote party wo

Never is a strong word. For one, we know nothing of the remote party's biology and medical achievements. In fact we don't even know whether the remote party would be a biological entity at all. They could be an engineered AI built by a species long gone or marginalized. Bottomline is we have no clue of their lifespan and mortality. On the other hand, we can also change beyond recognition within a single roundtrip so if human progress is sufficient then by the time the conversation really gets going it may become possible. Also, the nearest interesting stars are much closer than 1480 ly [1]. Generally under the most primitive assumptions about star distribution (uniform) we have a fast increase (O(n^3) within distance n ly) in the number of systems we could talk to. [1] http://www.space.com/18964-the-nearest-stars-to-earth-infographic.html http://www.space.com/18964-the-nearest-stars-to-earth-infogr...