Space exploration is not handicapped by technology, but by societal willpower in the absence of an existential crisis like the Cold War. The Alcubierre Drive i

Space exploration is not handicapped by technology, but by societal willpower in the absence of an existential crisis like the Cold War. The Alcubierre Drive is fine as a theoretically impossible physics plaything, but the expansion of the species beyond the Earth only requires funding to achieve using much more modest means. For every one space science mission that goes forward, our academic system produces 500 concepts that are judged too impractical or too expensive, and 50 that arrive at group consensus that it would be productive to move forward and submit proposals. 5 of them get funded into fully developed systems, and 4 are cancelled just shy of completion through because the JWST has cost overruns or the new Majority Leader / President wants to make his mark with an arbitrary decision like cancelling the 6 year old 20-year-plan for a Mars base in exchange for a 20-year-plan for a Moon base (that will be cancelled in six years). The path is there, the end discoveries (relative to many other fields) relatively certain, we just don't like to make the effort in any concerted way, and our government is broken; Congress would prefer it if they could just run NASA on a soundstage.