Will we ever reach distant stars

i mean like other planetary systems....like the ones that nasa discovered recently - the extraterestrial planets that look pretty much like earth? I suppose it's really hard and expensive - but the government should realize the potential benefits and invest huge amounts of money - i remember from school when our teacher was saying that during the cold war nasa's budget has been 10 times higher than what it is today - and for what....just to show the soviets that US is better? it's too stupid....if we manage to land on other planets in other solar systems they will have probably huge resources of diamonds, gold, as well as being good for nuclear tests, cloning tigers and what not...

anyway - so is it physically possible at all if the government invests - say one trillion dollars? what's stopping people like bill gates for example?

thanks!

Probably never.

The problem is the amount of energy that's required to reach even planets in our solar system. Once we resolve that, then the energy to reach even the neareast stars is much greater.

So, suppose that out there, there is a planet that has a billion tons of gold, just sitting on the surface. It takes roughly USD$ 1,000,000 to lift a payload of a single pound (weight) of material into earth orbit. A man weighs, say, 200 pounds (with his spacesuit, necessary for survival) - that's $200,000,000, just to get him into orbit!. Now, it takes roughly 5 tons (10,000 pounds) of food and water, plus about 5,000 pounds of air to keep him in orbit (not counting fuel to adjust the orbit) for a year. That's $15,000,000,000 required to do that. Then there's the research to ensure the enviropnment is conducive to living "out there", and the back-up team here on earth that need to be paid - so add another $10,000,000,000 for that.
So, now, we're in the billions of dollars for a year, and that's just to get into orbit.