The vastness of space is breathtaking really and we have a very, very long road to travel (in technological terms) if we're ever going to get anywhere with space travel.

Currently, we can't travel fast enough. To illustrate this, the Voyager spacecraft were launched 35 years ago..... Yes, it really is that long ago and Voyager 1 is "only" about 11,400,000,000 miles away and just about entering interstellar space.

Really, I think that although it's "interesting" to look in to deep space, it's all a bit of a waste of time at the moment and more of that effort ought to be concentrated on propulsion systems and the survivability of faster spacecraft.

By "survivability", I'm particularly thinking of "sheilds up" (Startrek). Hitting even a speck of dust at very high space-speed could result in the destruction of the craft (and crew).

By spending so much time and effort on deep space seems to me to be a bit like the Wright Brothers contemplating travelling at Mach 3.