All the planning charts and demolition orders for it have been on display in the local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty Earth years

...in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door...

What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh for heaven sake mankind it’s only four light years away! I’m sorry but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that’s your own regard.

It’s just going to be a bunch of NIMLICs at the meeting anyway (Not In My Local Interstellar Cloud).

'beware of the leopard'.

This is kind of a plot element in Mass Effect, but the humans are lucky enough to have a stop in our system.

What do you mean the humans are lucky enough to have a stop in _our_ system?!

I think the Reapers may have arrived 167 years too early.

Come on giant space Cthulhus, we haven't even discovered the Prothean Ruins in Mars yet!

Did New Horizons categorically rule out that there's something hidded inside Charon?

We just need to build a station in the neighborhood: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613127/a-halo-drive-could...

It's unlikely. Closer to the core there is too much radiation for life to be possible.

And farther away there are not enough metals.

As best as we can tell we are at the distance where all other life would be.

You are not very far from what could be the reality. According to some research the Solar System has 10% less hydrogen than other galaxies, so Bussard ramjets will have an harder time

What if dark matter turns out the key to a decent space drive? There appear to be galaxies without it (a good reason for believing it exists where there is evidence) and so any aliens there would be SOL.

Astonishingly enough, you might not be far off. That is the operating principle behind the Alcubierre Drive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Edit: Apologies, it seems it does not in fact use dark matter.

Unfortunately, Alcubierre doesn't use dark matter. It uses negative mass (or even imaginary mass) matter. Dark Matter is believed to have regular positive mass (if it were negative mass, we'd be wondering why galaxies seemed to have less matter than they should).

The existence of negative mass exotic matter remains an open question.

The Alcubierre drive relies on negative matter, not dark matter.

No doubt stolen by the untrustworthy Andromedites!

Suburbs intentionally avoid mass transit.

You are thinking of... a ghetto.

Or the wilderness

my pet theory is that galaxies are more like fireworks wheels, and so we aren't strictly orbiting the galactic center, we're also slowly getting farther and farther from it (that also takes care of the dark matter conundrum in my view), and thus couple billions of years ago we were in the much better and more populated part of the town than the current 'burbs.