Kepler has now discovered over four thousand planets, and nearly 50 of them are Earth-like. We really need to dust off the plans for the original Orion concept and build one of those babies.
not with that attitude! Nobody thought a runner could break the four minute mile either! Granted a four minute mile pace across space might be problematic.........
Actually breaking the Four Minute Mile wasn't all that significant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Bannister What was the big deal at that time: 1) It had been several years (9 IIRC) since a new mile record had been set. 2) Roger Bannister did not train very hard to do it. Lots of his friends thought he was not taking his running seriously (he did focus heavily on his medical work naturally at that time). 3) He broke the Four Minute Mile under what were at best poor conditions. A wet track for example. I figure interstellar travel will be more like the Wright Brothers work on the airplane. Lots of people were working to achieve it. They just happened to put everything together at once and properly document it.
I still think FTL will happen when someone in a lab looks at their data and says "Hey, this is funny. Anybody else notice this?"
Which is why you plow your resources into basic research in the first place instead of just applied research. Tyson likes to use the example of telling the worlds experts in heat to build a better oven. No matter what they build they would never build a microwave oven. Because microwave technology grew out of communications research.
