I think he meant how long we can live before dying of old age, and that all the fuel in our hypothetical spacecraft would run out before we reach any intelligent life (if any).
Although I suppose you could try the old sci-fi self-sufficient mega spaceship theory, where you have a ship filled with people and plants and such so that it will be self-sufficient and fuel will be made, new generations born and so on that the ship can continue cruising through space until it finds some intelligent life or something.
Of course, that'd pretty much be condemning the pioneer astronauts to death in space. But then again if they have children and have developed relationships up there in their mega ship it wouldn't be so bad I guess.