Re:What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientis...
by tzs on Wednesday February 14, 2024 @02:29PM
(#39374056)
> Honestly it's all kind of silly because distances are so vast. It makes little sense to travel to a distant star - much better to build space habitats in your own star system.
Maybe their own star system is not safe for them. Say a political or religious minority that the majority would like to exterminate.
> And even if you were going to do that for some crazy reason, there's no shortage of uninhabited planets out there. There's no need to commit planetary genocide of an alien race.
If they've got cheap and easy FTL, sure. But suppose they don't have FTL. They are going the slow way, using a generation ship. At launch they may only know that their destination has a habitable planet but not know if it has intelligent life already.
Their generation ship environment might not be reliable enough for them to want to risk trying to move on to another star if it turns out the first habitable plant already has intelligent life.
Maybe their own star system is not safe for them. Say a political or religious minority that the majority would like to exterminate.
> And even if you were going to do that for some crazy reason, there's no shortage of uninhabited planets out there. There's no need to commit planetary genocide of an alien race.
If they've got cheap and easy FTL, sure. But suppose they don't have FTL. They are going the slow way, using a generation ship. At launch they may only know that their destination has a habitable planet but not know if it has intelligent life already.
Their generation ship environment might not be reliable enough for them to want to risk trying to move on to another star if it turns out the first habitable plant already has intelligent life.