A friend of mine is a rocket engineer and has a craft in space at the moment (he's part of ESA) using ionised xenon as the basis of it's power. It accelerates very slowly, but is hard to stop when it gets going.
The first step is colonisation of the Moon as a place from which to jumpstart exploration, but that will take years. It is going to be the survivors of whatever catastrophe hits in the not too near future who will make the leap.
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When in Woking do as the Wokes do.
"I do not wish to form my opinions by thoughtlessly quoting others; I wish others to support their opinions by sensibly quoting me." Paul Wesson (Aardvark) 13th April 2008
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