Originally posted by C Hess
This, I think, is the most realistic scenario.
I don't think it's feasible to escape the galaxy. Much more likely to make a starship capable of going say 1000 light years or so in a reasonable amount of time.
I think antimatter drives will be worked out which will be 1000 times more powerful than fusion or fission drives and they already know how to do it if they can just get a few grams of antimatter to feed it. They say a few milligrams of antimatter is all it would take to launch the space shuttle into orbit. So the fuel goes a long long way.
If we get close to c, say 99.9999% of c you get some nice relativistic effects where you may get to the 1000 light year point in just a few years but of course 1000 years still goes by on Earth. Which may not matter if you know there is going to be a supernova going off sometime after you leave. Your ship and others like it would be the only thing left of mankind.
The only problem going that fast is one piece of dust has the energy of a cannon. So you better have really good shielding in front. Powerful lasers and ladars can detect large stuff but enough small stuff can still cause damage.
They say the front of the ship would be covered in a thick layer of water ice which would absorb most of the small stuff and the ladar/laser ionizing the big stuff and extreme magnetic fields deflecting the now ionized stuff coming in which will deflect that stuff around the ship. Superconducting magnets can do that job.