future of space travel

well, as the era of mass commerical space travel edges closer, i thought it would be interesting to just ahead and see what ppl here think will be the piece of kit that allows mankind to travel to other stars and explore alien worlds.

1) sublight sleeper ships with cryo beds so we dont all die of natural cause before we get anywhere near another solar system.

ads:
– reletively small leap in tech, could be done within our lifetimes (well sent out that is).

disads:
– crew will never see the world as they knew it.
– no-one will know if they succeeded or all turned into meat popcycles for hundreds if not thousands of years, not every good for follow on missions.

2) faster then light travel.

ads:
– crews can get to nearby planets and back without missing too much back home.
– should be easy to track progress of missions.

disads:
– may still be too slow to explore much of our own galexy never mind the universe.
– theroretically impossible. 😀
– massive tech leap needed (not to meantion a new set of physics text books 😉 )

3) teleportation.

ads:
– theoretically possible (multiple labs across the world have successfully transported single molecules.
– instantanious, meaning u can pop to klingon world for pee and be back home before angry klingons kill u.

disads:
– range is problamatic cos of the amount of power needed.
– while we can all do with the teleporter forgetting to put back some fat cells :D, im not too keen on loosing any other part of my body just yet.

4) jump gates.

ads:
same as for 3) + not having the possibility of missing or mispositioned body parts.

disads:
– need jump gates at both ends, so problem again arises in regard with getting the gate there in the first place.

5) finding and charting a network of wormholes.

ads:
– no great technical chanllenges for us.

disads:
– wont know where u’ll end up until after u’ve been through the worm hole.
– cant choose where u want to entre or come out.
– wormholes might kill u or shrink u or brainwash u… before u get to the other side (cos all we know about them are theoretical).
– migt not exist at all.

6) other.