Realistically speaking, unless we created FTL travel (or some other means of overcoming Einsteinian time dilation), travel to other planets will still take years. Maybe not for us, the players, but years will have passed on Earth while we were zipping along at near-[i]c [/i] speeds. Honestly, I don't think we're "trapped" in our Solar System. What's keeping us here is that the keys to our salvation lie scattered about the system and we need to clear out all of the squatters in our backyard in order to get at them.