When can we go ?

Actually I thought Snowcrash might be interested in this, but have an idea that he probably already knows.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/real-habitable-exoplanet

Not seen this latest development in the exo-planet hunt. Good find.

I think about 500+ exo-planets have been found now and this is the first in the goldielocks zone. I'm waiting to go 'whoop whoop' when they find a exo-planet around a G star about 150,000,000 km away from its star.
We are very close technologically to this resolution. There're a couple of satellites up there looking and telescopes down here.

So we are a step closer to finding out that we are not alone in the galaxy, nice find Freddy.

More about this planet here :

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25930/

QuoteFirst Wind and Temperature Maps Of Exo-Earth.

By modelling the atmosphere of the first Earth-like exoplanet, astronomers have produced temperature and wind maps of this alien place.

A couple of 'keep your head on the ground' facts...

Gilese is tidally locked so one side is always hot, one side cold. The habitable bit would be the terminator ring moving towards the hot side.
At voyager 1's speed (the fastest human probe at about 10mile/sec) it would take about 150,000 years to get there.
Have I mentioned before that space is really big. 

The latest on Gilese 581g is...

It does not exist. The signal was just noise. This is how difficult the tech is at the mo.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1320539/Gliese-581g-exist.html

On an up point, Kepler sat. has released its first set of data with anotheer 1000 planets, bringing the total to 1500 odd. Science marches on.

This is a good link in APOD.
Go here and click 'original' for largest version.

It shows the relative sizes of stars and how big a shadow the exoplanets make on their star.
The star on it's own near top right is our sun for reference. The dot you can see would be Jupiter and in the large version you can see how big a dot the Earth would make.

This is from data from Kepler.