>>10912633what's makes you think it's probably possible? FTL according to our current understanding of physics is problematic in a really fundamental way and proposed methods to do so involve imagining things we have no reason to assume actually exist, not to mention the causality violations it would seem to create and whatnot. The energies required seem to be absolutely enormous as well. There are just about "conceivable" ways around this, but the obstacles are so big that it by the time we'd overcome them we'd probably be post-human anyway in which case the time scales that seem to be such a big hurdle to interstellar travel wouldn't matter the same way they do now. Not to mention that for the travelers, even just near-light speed would decrease the experienced time a lot. Now it might be a stretch to assume we could achieve such speeds, but certainly less so than FTL.
The only thing you really need FTL specifically for is traveling somewhere far away and return in a way that insane amounts of time hasn't passed from the point of view of your point of departure. There are much more realistic ways do deal with aging (which is the one big problem about the time required for interstellar travel) and sense of how much time has passed for the travelers (time dilation due to near light speed, "sleeper ships", manipulation of our psychology etc.)
