Since we're all rolling out our best fiction here, here's mine: We'll get there animating matter by means of beaming laser instructions onto it. We just need t

Since we're all rolling out our best fiction here, here's mine: We'll get there animating matter by means of beaming laser instructions onto it. We just need to discover how we can move atoms by simply shinning a laser onto them, a controlled pulse of different light frequencies that allows us to arrange atoms in such way that they become tiny building blocks of nano-machines, like making pizza dough: twisting, throwing, rolling, until we have the right shape. Once the first Lego pieces are ready, we use the same laser to instill the energy required to move them. These animated nano-machines will then auto-assemble and become a bigger machine until we effectively, and remotely, build and operate a full-featured robot. Said bot will send back everything we need: images, audio, chemical reads, etc. Furthermore, our bot can build more bots and eventually build the laser that can be beamed into the next planet to repeat the process and expand colonization.