[Physicist]

You can quibble about the speed of alien spacecraft, and whether they can move at 1 percent of the speed of light or 10 percent of the speed of light. It doesn't matter.

No, but if they can only move at a hundredth of a percent of the speed of light--a much more reasonable figure--then it does matter. The fact is, going from star to star is just plain hard. I fully expect that corporeal human beings will never make the trip. (Once we learn how to transfer our consciousness to nonliving substrates, however, we just might manage it.)

[mlo]

I fully expect that corporeal human beings will never make the trip. (Once we learn how to transfer our consciousness to nonliving substrates, however, we just might manage it.)

I think we will one day build sentient machines. They will probably supercede us. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, think of it as our next evolutionary step. Our children supercede us too after all.

I don't think we will "transfer" our consciousness to anything else. I think that's impossible. But hey, I think when Kirk goes through the transporter a new person comes out with all Kirk's memories. The first one is dead. (Won't catch me on no transporters.)

[Timm]

No, but if they can only move at a hundredth of a percent of the speed of light--a much more reasonable figure--then it does matter. The fact is, going from star to star is just plain hard. I fully expect that corporeal human beings will never make the trip. (Once we learn how to transfer our consciousness to nonliving substrates, however, we just might manage it.)

I don't see any reason to be so pessimistic about travel speeds. We can already, now, imagine ways to travel some significant fraction of the speed of light, v>.1c. If we felt like spending the money, we could use these technologies today, or very soon. There are the nuclear propulsion systems of the Daedalus project, solar sails, etc.

It's not extravagant to speculate that in several centuries we would be capable of traveling even faster and at a practical level of expense.

[mrsmith]

"can only move at a hundredth of a percent of the speed of light--a much more reasonable figure--then it does matter. "

Yep, right now we can move a few man-month's worth of environment at about 10 miles per sec.
That's an amazingly long, long way from moving several man-years worth of environment at 180,000+ miles per second- which is what is assumed by Pauli.