Since this entire thread is 'equipped to survive' off topic I'll venture to ask a question that's been puzzling me.
I've heard the distances are so great that mankind will never leave the solar system. Is this true?
The Sock
With current technology, pretty much.
The Apollo missions traveled at roughly 3300mph to get to the moon in three days. At that speed, it would take roughly 800,000 years to reach the Centauri system, 4 lightyears away. (A lightyear is approximately 5,800,000,000,000 miles.)
Our fastest space probes ever are the Helios probes, but they are orbiting the sun. The only ones heading out into interstellar space are the Voyager, Pioneer, and eventually the New Horizons probes. The fastest of those is Voyager 1, at about 38,600mph. But even it would still take about 4,500 years to reach Centauri, if it were pointed that way.
There are some promising alternative drives on the drawing boards, but even they don't get an interstellar journey down to a single lifetime.
That's why Science Fiction usually uses one of the various workarounds Art described: FTL ("Faster Than Light") travel, some kind of jump/wormhole shortcut, or "Generation Ships".