> . People want to live in Star Trek or Star Wars so want it to be true. I think it's more than just wanting it: a century of scifi has convinced people that "

> . People want to live in Star Trek or Star Wars so want it to be true. I think it's more than just wanting it: a century of scifi has convinced people that "cheap" (in terms of energy and time dilation) FTL travel does exist and we just have to figure it out, when there's no a priori reason to think so at all. The same with most other aspects of space travel. There's no reason to believe anything recognizably human will be engaging in interstellar space travel, and if it's not human, I personally don't care. I don't feel some sort of religious mandate to invent machines or bioengineered entities to take over the universe. We've really underestimated the power of media programming.