Should scientists focus on interstellar travel more than interplanetary?(Lightspeed travel)

When I was young I enjoyed science fiction. Heinlein and Asimov were its leading exponents, with Heinlein in particular resorting to an odd mix of 1950s conservative Cold War politics and sexual liberties of unrestrained patriarchs. I’m not quite that old, yet it would be difficult to publish a book like Stranger in a Strange Land today because of its violations of political correctness, while at my first reading, no unabridged edition was available because of morality fears. How much the world changes in a relatively short time! Another thing I see changing is the phenomenon of technological optimism. Back then inventions such as the wireless and the airplane were still in living memory. My dad’s teenage home bought a new thing called television, in black and white with vacuum tubes and a rabbit ears antenna on top. Shortly trips to the moon were ongoing. The dizzying pace at which life modernized brought a feeling that anything at all would be possible within a lifetime or so. Since then, the pace has slowed a bit. Tech is being refined, but nothing as fundamental as radio waves has been discovered since the early 20th century. Emphasis has switched from massive projects (Space Shuttle and Fermilab alike are shuttered now) to the less expensive directions of genomics and computerization. We still have forms of tech optimism, but they lie more in things like health care than in Jetsons lifestyles lived off-planet. It’s not clear we will even go to Mars. President George H. W. Bush proposed an effort in 1989 he thought would cost $250 billion in 1980s money, and as you allude to, suggested international partnerships with Japan and Europe. But nothing’s been done. We’re also losing interest in putting people into orbit, with closure of the Int’l Space Station expected in about 6 years. You’re correct to note that arid Mars will never be a self-sustaining home for human beings, yet terraforming it in the way Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars trilogy envisions might be easier than finding a habitable planet outside the solar system and going there. The energy needed to change Mars or Venus into Earthlike worlds is probably less than the energy needed to make any kind of wormhole, although I admit I’m speculating. Hawking doesn’t provide an estimate on that. The most efficient fuel is of course antimatter, which can react with matter to convert all the fuel mass into radiant energy. The warp drives in Star Trek used this. The problem here is that antimatter must be manufactured in some way in a plant using conventional energy sources. Fermilab took more power than its hometown of Chicago just to make a few subatomic antimatter particles. Currently, we have no idea how to make it in quantity, or how to store and use it once it’s made. We have yet to prove that technology can indeed develop without the ecological or mental ceilings that some analysts believe will come into play. I think interstellar travel could ultimately become reality. It’s not in the 21st century’s cards, however, or likely before thousands of years pass and our civilization discovers stuff it has no inkling of now. We need to solve our problems of war and getting along on the one habitable planet we know before going on to become galaxians. The sun isn’t due to expire anytime soon.