There is such a commotion around the exoplanets that have been discovered 39 light years from Earth, but this is way too far away for humans to reach it. Traveling at 200,000,000 miles per hour, it would take 130 years to reach the system. If you were in an infinite rocket, traveling at 90,000 miles per hour, it would take 290,607 years to get there. That is a very long time indeed. And we do not even have the technology to travel at 200,000,000 miles per hour, so it does not even matter. They say they are right next door, but they are actually very far away on a cosmic scale. I mean, getting to Mars would take a while, but it is a hell of a lot closer than 39 light years away. One way is with an electromagnetic ramscoop ship accelerating at 1g. This could get us there in 8.6 years. But an enormous amount of time would pass on Earth, compared to the ship. And it would be traveling at 2.69×10^6 km/s at the end of the journey. This is 8.973 times the speed of light. So, this means that the ship would need to start decelerating way before the end of the journey.
But the journey would not take that long, even with acceleration and deceleration times taken into account. This technology is not exactly possible yet. But warp drive is looking more promising. The Star Trek TNG Enterprise at warp 6 would take 36 days to get to the exoplanet for study and observation. A classic Star Trek TOS Enterprise at warp 3 would get there in 1 and a half years. Not very long at all. Plenty of time to fraternize with Yeoman Rand. I wish we could get to space now and see what the exoplanet really is like, it is probably a giant planet with massive gravity that would smash us flat if we landed on it. Or it is way too hot for any life except silicon based to exist. That would be interesting to see though. Life can exist anywhere. There is microbial life on nuclear fuel rods, and at the bottom of the ocean near volcanic vents, where the water is 400 degrees. That could also exist in the deep oceans on Europa. If we could even get there with the current political climate. War is on the horizon again. And this is not good.
But we will move on from that eventually. Jupiter and the asteroid belts would be the best place for mining, Europa, for the deep ice and massive ocean underneath. And the aforementioned asteroid belt for mining rocks that would be worth trillions. Why can we not do this in 2017? This would have massive returns for humanity. Bringing back thousands of tons of rocks and enriching the Earth would be awesome. If we had the Star Wars hyperdrive, it would take no time at all, to travel anywhere, they can travel across the galaxy, which is 100,000 light years in a quick jump. Far faster than Star Trek can dream of. Unless the episode is brought up where the traveler accelerated the warp drive and the ship traveled 2,700,00 light years in 3 minutes. That was impressive. It used the power of thought to allow them to reach further than they could have dreamed of. The second jump took them 1 billion light years in the other direction. That is an unimaginable distance. If we could do that, we could explore the entire galaxy in no time. But we are too entrenched in warfare to ever look upwards. That is sad indeed.