Why is everybody so pessimistic about our ability to develop much faster space travel, at a reasonable cost, relatively soon?
(interplanetary AND interstellar)

Pamela also refers to this (directly and indirectly) several times during the show itself, I quote just one example:
"The further you try and go it gets not just twice as hard when you double the distance, but 20 times harder when you double the distance, or 1 thousand times harder when you try and get to the next star.[/size]

Just consider some facts:
1) a trip on an intercontinental airplane today is way cheaper (and faster) than a passage on the Titanic was only a century ago
2) a trip into lower space (see Virgin Galactic) is starting to become easier than the first attempts of transatlantic flight (definitely faster, too)
3) Even a trip to Mars, though maybe at the very limit of our current capabilities, is probably not a greater challenge than Columbus' or Magellan's voyages a few centuries ago (actually Mars might be easier - we know were we're heading and what will be the challenges once we're there, Columbus didn't know either)



Based on the historical rate of technological evolution
(which is actually still accelerating according to most indicators),
don't we have reason to assume that we might get there relatively soon?

And not even necessarily at such a huge cost?

Is that really such a wild speculation?