[Argos]

What IAU does now is, simply stupid. The definition that everything that has a round form will be a planet is absolutely ridiculous. From planetogenesis we have a good view what's a planet and what not. We have the rocky inner planets (4 of them) and a ring of rocky debris (Asteroids), which are not called planets, and gaseous outer planets (4 of them) and at least one ring of icy debris from the formation of the outer planets. That Pluto was supposed to be a planet too, was an error of the astronomers who, until the middle of the seventies believed that Pluto is as large as the earth.
If this proposal will be accepted we will have an inflation of 'planets' and nobody will know the correct number of them.
Let's see what we have today. In the Asteroid belt there is Ceres and with Pallas and Vesta (diameter over 500 km) two additional bodies which are on the verge of being 'planets' in this definition. Objects of the Kuiper belt would need no more than 400 km. The already known 1000 km circus of objects there is Pluto, Charon, Sedna, Quaoar, Ixion, Varuna, 2003 UB313, 2003 EL61, 2006 FY9, 2004 DW and I won't continue with all the others larger than 400 km.

Originally Posted by haku

Warp/hyper drive allowing us to travel faster than light will probably be invented in a century or two...

There are only two problems to be solved:
1. If you reach light velocity you create your own Black hole, so you will be crushed to singularity.
2. If you are beyond light velocity you have left our universe, because it is defined and restricted by light velocity.

Originally Posted by haku

...astronomers are confident that in a few decades new powerful telescopes will allow us to directly observe small planets in the neighboring star systems.

If you want a picture of an earth like planet in good resolution, let's say 1000 x 1000 pixels you need only a telescope with a mirror of more than thousand kilometers.

Originally Posted by haku

Also, i personnaly think that the terraformation of Venus is possible, which would give us a second habitable planet right in our Solar System.

Here we have a little problem too. Venus has no water. Keeping in mind earth history, even the water content of the earth is very low for maintaining a stable climate. So, all you need is, take a water satellite like Tethys from the Saturn system, carry that thing to Venus, let it explode and pour the debris over Venus.

Good luck with your future plans, haku!