[shireboy]

I really like this thread. Both make good points. I still land on space being really big and really hard. Maybe so much so that multi-stellar civilization is next to impossible and multi-galactic moreso.

If you think resources are scarce on Kepler-452b, wait til you see how bad things on the Space Mormon ship. Especially since it’s 60% harder to exit the gravity well than it would be on our destination at Sol-3. We used all our lift capabilities just to get the basics to orbit. Once we get out there, it’s 1400 light years away, so will take us 5600 years to get to Sol assuming we can get the drives going full speed and still retain enough delta-v to brake in Sol orbit. If not, it may even take longer or worse - we zoom by as a blip at the edge of the system. The good news is our telescopes are pretty sure it’s habitable, but we don’t hear any techno signatures. So with any luck we arrive in 6000 years and have enough gametes in storage for the incubators to build a viable colony from. I just hope the kids behave once they get there.