Is humanity a spacefaring race?

Seth Shostak: We're destined to go to the stars. That's the assumption we've been making for a century, and I daresay most readers believe this as surely as they believe we'll eventually cure dandruff. Our anticipation of an interstellar destiny is not merely the consequence of too many couch-hours spent watching Spandex-suited astronauts in Star Trek, Star Wars, or Futurama. It's been a subtext of our space program. You might recall a low-grade, 1960 biopic about Wernher von Braun entitled I Aim at the Stars. Or perhaps you know the sunny motto of the National Space Society: "ad astra" ("to the stars"). "