"I wonder if I'll live long enough to see images beamed back from an interstellar probe?"

I would say you have a small, but definitely non-zero, chance of that - but it probably depends more on the development of effective life prolonging therapies that anything else. We're quite a long way from being motivated enough to build a dedicated interstellar probe and then you would probably have to wait a few decades for the probe to actually get somewhere and a, much smaller, time for the signals to get back.

Personally, I'd settle for seeing manned exploration of Mars and I think that may just happen...

Mankind is into space since what, 75 years?

Its too early to think of traveling to far points in space using the technology we have.

Imagine some thousands of years back, planning to explore the world using an ox cart. Yet today, airplanes have made that perfectly possible.

Well, if we really wanted to we could probably hack something together along the lines of the Project Orion designs right now, but it would be hugely expensive and pretty messy so I can't see anyone doing that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propul...

I suspect if we do send out interstellar probes they will be tiny rather than flying battleships:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starwisp

The hominid diaspora occurred using feet and canoes. Tens of thousands of years ago.

Of course no individuals 'traveled the globe' in that era, but a gradual process was plenty sufficient to cover the globe with humans.

What's frustrating to me is that apparently a modestly priced (for spacecraft) dual-satellite telescope system has been designed that could return images of extrasolar planets like we were snapping pictures of Saturn, but it hasn't made any progress because of budget limitations.

Edit: here's a brief article that gives an overview of a lower-budget, swarm technique being proposed by Planetary Resources - http://www.dvice.com/archives/2012/04/could_planetary.php