We are billions of light years away from some stars. That means that if I had a sweet rocketship that could travel at the speed of light, it would still take me billions of years to get there. And if THAT wasn't bad enough, the stupid universe is expanding. So as I travel, the distance is getting GREATER STILL. How much is it expanding? It is expanding at a speed such that an object 4 billion light years away this instant would potentially take 13 billion years to get to travelling at the speed of light. So ok fine- there are places in the universe that we can never get to.
What about the closest stuff?
The closest star system to the Sun is the Alpha Centauri system. Of the three stars in the system Proxima Centauri is the nearest star. It is 4.22 light years away. The fastest space probe we've sent up, the Voyager 1, travels at 39,000mph. If this was sent to Proxima Centauri, it would take 17,000 years to get there.
Some stuff to read:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/research/warp/ipspaper.html
http://www.physorg.com/news8817.html
These articles almost make you feel excited that interstellar travel might be possible, but I call shenanigans on the whole thing. I don't think its going to be happening in the next 500 years, which is a bunch of garbage. When I watched sci-fi growing up in the 80s, all of the space movies were set in the early 2000s. I thought I was going to be an intergalactic pirate or something. Now I am instead in a cubicle working as an analyst, driving a Honda. What gives?