[geoschmo]

It has occured to me my previous remarks about the unlikelyhood of us ever getting out of our own system were a bit pessimistic. If one considers the potential of nano-technology it may be possible someday. If you can conceive of a ship that is maintained and repaired by billions of microscopic nano-bots scouring the ship and making repairs at the molecular level, it's conceivable that we could build a ship that could travel for hundreds, even thousands of years and arrive at it's destination in the same pristine condition that it left Earth.