Somebody's seen one too many Star Trek episodes...
Honestly, we would need a much faster way of travel. Warp 6 isn't really plausible, not as far as I know. We would also need a way to tell direction in space - North, South, East, and West don't apply unless you're relative to something, and even then it would be hard to tell. We would need some way to communicate, something that could reach from there to here and back with clarity and speed. We would need a source of power that could get the ship there and back. We would need so many things that just don't exist (yet). It's not just making it there and back before generations pass, it's all the other stuff we need. Great thinking, though.
More compact life support systems will definitely be needed.
The ability to cheaply transport materials from the ground to orbit, in addition to orbital spaceports.
Nuclear rockets and lightweight radiation shielding would help. If fusion is developed, electromagnetic ram-scoops would definitely shorten the trip.
If there are no nuclear rockets, solar sails.
I have a theory of using a stable Black Hole, now all of us know that a Black Hole has an escape velocity exceeding the Speed of Light so if we were able to capture a Black Hole (which is way off in the future, so if we had the Technology to capture a Black Hole will mean we have the technology exceeding the Universe making my theory redundant but ignore this) and continue to feed it, and use the escape Velocity to propel the Shuttle forward it will eliminate Fual usage and make the ship super fast. i think i may have heard this theory somewhere else but i think its very invetive and a possible scienerio though this is a theory.
We'll need some kind of advanced propulsion technology; if we were placing bets I'd go with fusion or antimatter. Even at close to the speed of light it'd still be an amazingly long journey, of course, so we'd also need to develop the capability to create a self-sustaining biological system (which Biosphere 2 showed was harder than we expected). Not to mention we'll need some kind of shielding for the trip--not just from radiation, but from objects we'll be slamming into at speeds that would easily destroy the spacecraft.
Humans will never be able to manipulate space. I don't think space has an actual "fabric" that you can manipulate. The fabric of space time is probably like the sky. Its there, but not a literal object
Gravity isn't strong enough to use it to travel anywhere. Maybe when going to Mars, but not Star travel
If wormholes exist, if you were to travel through one, there is no way to know where yo will end up. It could be another galaxy, time, or maybe a different Universe.
I love the ion drive rockets, but to get to the stars, and back, we need to go faster than that. We need to go faster than light.
Since the only thing we know that travels at the speed of light.....is light, we should manipulate light. Sounds crazy...but so did blackholes 30 year ago. If we can speed up light (we can slow it down) and since light has mass, we should be able to put a micro probe on a light beam, speed the probe up, which would speed the light up, which would take us almost anywhere in the galaxy at the very least.
Manipulating gravity. Or figuring out what gravity really is, because i really don't think we have it right. I think its far more likely dark matter and dark energy is something we made it simply because we dont really understand gravity.
Possibly slipping into a tangent universe where the laws of physics may be different
Humans will never be able to manipulate space. I don't think space has an actual "fabric" that you can manipulate. The fabric of space time is probably like the sky. Its there, but not a literal object
Gravity isn't strong enough to use it to travel anywhere. Maybe when going to Mars, but not Star travel
If wormholes exist, if you were to travel through one, there is no way to know where yo will end up. It could be another galaxy, time, or maybe a different Universe.
I love the ion drive rockets, but to get to the stars, and back, we need to go faster than that. We need to go faster than light.
Since the only thing we know that travels at the speed of light.....is light, we should manipulate light. Sounds crazy...but so did blackholes 30 year ago. If we can speed up light (we can slow it down) and since light has mass, we should be able to put a micro probe on a light beam, speed the probe up, which would speed the light up, which would take us almost anywhere in the galaxy at the very least.