NO. Never. Not ever, even 100 quadrillion years from now. Never. Clearly, what follows is just my opinion. It seems to bother people. Some call it pessimistic. Some call it overly optimistic. Whatever. It is just my opinion.
Should our species still exist for the next one thousand years —meaning we don’t kill ourselves with bio-engineered plagues or a KT-like impact doesn’t happen— we will eventually stop being “human” in a few centuries.
Only centuries? Not millions of years?
Yes. Suppose that we continue (a) existing and (b) advancing in technology, by the middle of this century, we will have knowledge and ability with our entire DNA, nanotechnology and AI (artificial intelligence). Following this thinking to a logical conclusion, these technologies mean that at some point in the next few centuries, there will be no more homo sapiens. Perhaps a few “museum humans” will choose to remain in their old form (meaning the form that we have today), but those people will live on Earth or space stations. They will be too weak and short-lived to go into spaceships for interstellar travel.
Our grandchildren will adjust their DNA and genes. Maybe it won’t become commonplace to do this adjustment until 2125, but at some point very soon, the desire to remove all “negative” genetic traits will be too much. The desire to improve our DNA with some genetics from other animals will become too much. The desire to improve with computer chips —that directly connect into our brains— will be too much. The desire to create new biological enhancements — never tried by natural evolution but completely invented by us and our super-advanced computer technology — will be too much.
At some point, after enough changes, we won’t really be human any longer. We certainly won’t be homo sapiens. We’ll be something else … IF humans survive that long and continue advancing in technologically. A worldwide disaster could destroy most of our civilization but still leave a million people living life the same as it was 5000 years ago. But if we survive and continue advancing, then homo sapiens will disappear in a few centuries at the longest; a century at the shortest.
At some point in time, the advancing technology will invent self-assembling, self-making robots whose population will increase exponentially. That invention will either take us to new, better levels of living or end us (think of the movie “Terminator”). With our lifespan extended to thousands of years, with ability in VR (virtual reality) and AI’s, the long times that it takes to travel around space won’t be a barrier to travel the way it is today. A journey at just 1% of the speed of light which would take 1,000–1,500 years to cross the far distance between stars will be meaningless in the lives of those beings. Those beings will effectively be immortal, and they will not see time as an obstacle.
Those beings, if they get created, will be able to do interstellar travel. Not us. Not humans. Never homo sapiens, but them.