It could be we develop some new physics soon and hopefully the engineering know how to take advantage of it. In this scenario we've developed space travel with a still primitive understanding of human biology. A far more likely option in my eyes (although still very unlikely as this is all speculation and opinion) is that we eventually develop a way to move into the transhuman era and robot ourselves. At this point space travel can use the traditional method of traveling < speed of light although this isn't interesting. Also, if you can upload your mind onto a server, I wonder how much value you'd place on exploration. Of course the singularity concept is just SciFi right now and probably just as likely as us developing wormholes, but it seems like it should be more likely given another century or two.
I think I'd put "uploading" in the same category as 'faster than light travel' - lots and lots of breakthroughs in fundamental sciences need to happen before we get either one of those things. (FTL travel feels less squishy to me, but that's just because the problem can be defined in a less squishy sort of way. I see no evidence that it's actually easier) -
As far as colony ships go, I think it would be hard to feed people for a couple of centuries, keep the systems running, and keep the passengers from going insane. It would have to be very big for even a few people in my mind for the agricultural requirements.
Ehhhh...
If you place a lot of intrinsic value on being human, as most humans do, then the idea of sending non-humans to space is going to completely miss the point.