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Once we have antigravity (i.e. gravity control technology), we will be able to bend spactime to order. The creation of wormholes will follow.

And once we have wormholes, we won't need spaceships of any kind. Instead, we'll create a pair of nuclear-particle-scale linked wormhole mouths, A and B; then park A in Earth orbit, and use a particle accelerator to shoot B to the target star at relativistic velocity. (The wormhole diameter can be very small, since the diameter of the wormhole link need only be wide enough to allow a low-res communications laser beam to pass through the link.) Due to relativistic time dilation, only a few days will pass from B's point of view until B enters the target star system. Since clocks on both ends of a wormhole must always agree, those watching the view through A will see the target star appear from the point of view of B only a few days after launch. At that point we "spin up" the wormhole, opening both A and B mouths to a size large enough to pass a deceleration framework and engine through. The decel rig capures B, fires its engine, and decelerates B until it enters orbit around the destination planet. We then spin the wormhole up until it is big enough to pass loads of any desired size.

And once this is done, we have no more need for spaceships. With wormholes, all travel is local travel; therefore, instead of a ship, we travel between the stars by train.

The 16:15 Tau Ceti Overnight Express leaves Earth Station, traveling up the Space Railway ("space elevator") link. Once above the atmosphere, as dinner isserved in the dining car, the train accelerates to its cruise speed of about 8,500 miles per hour en route to Wormhole Junction over Earth. Traveling at full express speed, the trip to the Junction (and A mouth) takes about six hours. As the Pullman passengers settle into their sleepers for the night, the Express passes through the Junction, entering the A Mouth -- and emerging instantaneously from B Mouth in orbit around Tau Ceti's fourth planet! The train then begins slowing down, putting energy back into its magnetic track as it glides down the Space Railway link to the destination planet's surface. Six hours later, as the passengers are finishing breakfast, the Special pulls in to Nova Terra Station, having traveled about 100,000 miles from the point of view of a person aboard the train, and 11.6 light years through "real" space -- all by rail.

We'll settle the New Frontier the same way we settled the old one -- by rail. Now that's an American future!