I wouldn’t say I believe we’ll achieve intergalactic travel. I’m not even certain we won’t blow ourselves up or alter our home planet’s ecology to the point we destroy ourselves. But if we manage to avoid those twin threats, and the next mass extinction event gives us sufficient time, I expect we will first colonize nearby, earth-like exoplanets; and that we will eventually figure out how to manage intergalactic exploration. It’s what we do. We always explore. Put us in the Garden of Eden and we’ll leave to see what outside the garden.
@gasman The Big Bang was a mere 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago, so the observable Universe should be about 27.596 billion light years across. Instead, it is 93 billion light years across. That means the most distant objects, galaxies and massive local clusters of galaxies, are receding from us at well above the speed of light due to the expansion of empty spacetime. So nature’s already not only figured out FTL travel, but how to fly whole clusters of galaxies apart at FTL speeds. Obviously, it can be done.