It's a very interesting thought, and something I find a lot in hardcore science fiction: the idea that humans may be computerized or mechanized. We could even envision the possibility that we could encode our "mental pattern" and transmit it as light to planets around nearby stars (in Richard Morgan's
Takeshi Kovacs novels, this is called "needlecasting").
I don't know if it's possible or not. I would like to see humans explore the solar system by sending actual people, but as Jackson points out we need faster travel and possibly adapted human beings to avoid the extreme timespans we currently face.
I do think we will venture past Mars. After all, it's not *that* far out to Jupiter...
