There is a particular progression of element creation that stars go through, that seems to be pretty well understood. Carbon is abundant, as well as oxygen and hydrogen. If conditions are in the Goldilocks range, and there is lots of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen around, there will be water. H2 +O2 --> water is thermodynamically favored. The Second Law drives it. If there was such a process for silicon, then there could be silicon-based life, but the main reaction for silicon seems to be Si +O2 --> silicon dioxide, AKA rocks. Silicon-based life never happens here, and we do have environments spanning the entire Goldilocks range of liquid water. Now in some much colder or much hotter environment, other processes might be dominant. There could even be intelligence operating inside stars!
I suspect we won't have interstellar travel by humans until we figure out how to upload human minds into other, much more robust hardware. That travel is going to take a very long time, include some very intense physical strains, and be incredibly boring if we can't shut our selves off for the boring bits. And if you can upload minds, you could duplicate them, and send out hundreds or thousands of probes in all directions while staying (relatively) safe at home. If any make it back, their experiences could be shared by something like the upload process.
