Fair enough, but I wonder if his theories about black holes have ever been proven? If he's responsible for an honest breakthrough in that area, then he deserves the accolades for it.
With the universe as old as it is (13.75 ±0.17 billion years old), were star-travel possible, it would have been done ten thousand times, or so, by now in our galaxy alone. It hasn't, so it won't.
Ah...but you're proceeding from the postulate that "it's never been done", which you cannot prove. Many believe that it has, and that star travel has been going on for millions of years throughout the cosmos.
Neither one of those propositions can be proven conclusively at present, so we're left with the lingering question, aren't we?
Hawking radiation. Good point. Hasn’t been observed. I wonder if the spin of a black hole could be sufficiently fast to counter the gravity and to allow a sub-light escape velocity. It would probably have to sping at .9999 c, or something.