We don't lack the industrial capacity either, we mostly lack a good reason to spend these resources in that direction.

And IMHO that's the main explanation for the Fermi paradox: we don't see aliens everywhere because they don't have a good reason to colonize other planets than their own either.

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7373737373 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Would that not also imply that improvements in ease of access to space, increase of energy production and -price reduction all level off before it becomes easy and affordable enough that mere curiosity would suffice to make it possible, for ALL civilizations?

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stymaar 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Due to science fiction people tend to forget how miserable life in space is.

Nobody would chose to sacrifice themselves and their descendants (because that's what such an expedition is about), for mere curiosity. And nobody would fund an expedition that will not reach destination before multiple hundreds of years, even if the said expedition doesn't consume the entire industrial output of a major nation.

Space is BIG.

	▲	an hour ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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kakacik an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Pure race long term survival, any sane civilization knows very well a single space item hurling fast enough can wipe out all conplex life on planet. Or vulcanoes, tectonics etc. Also every star eventually goes down, usually pretty violently (but thats properly a long term concern).

Its not 'if' question, just 'when'. You cant be space faring civilization and not know this.

	▲	throwaway12204 38 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Most of the theories assume that aliens want to spread out as much as possible. But perhaps they are satisfied with a second star system as "backup"? Maybe they even live inside asteroids or ships orbiting a dwarf star, because they are mostly in a Matrix-like existence and don't have much of a physical life? If someone provided a matrix world where you could live your dream life, I think a lot of us would choose to live in it. It would be so much better than real life. Our physical bodies could be maintained by robots, providing us with the perfect mix of sustenance and physical exercise to increase our life spans. Your body would eat healthy, but your mind would experience whatever food you would like.

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mytailorisrich 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We do lack the technological capacity.

Travelling to another star would require a fully self-contained spaceship with energy, life support, food, medical facilities, even production facilities able to function for centuries or millenia. We simply don't know how to do that.

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stymaar 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, we don't know how to do that, but we don't know how to build hundreds of aircraft carriers per year right now either, yes the US has done the later in WW2 and would probably be able to do it again should it be needed in an existential war.

With a sustained nationwide effort comparable to WW2 we could most likely send a spaceship out if the solar system in ten years or so. But why would anyone do that?

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mytailorisrich 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Building hundreds of aircraft carriers a year is an issue of scale, so of money and allocation of resources (assuming we have the manpower). But what I mentioned is more profoundly that we simply don't know how to even build one. It's knowledge and technology which are lacking.

Typical these things fall into one, two, many. Can you build one, two, many? These are very different propositions.

One means you know understand how to do it, mostly.

Two means you can repeat it, so you do understand it, it wasn't a fluke.

Many is scaling the process.

	▲	stymaar 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Scaling is a technology of its own (and it's often the hardest part).

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iso1631 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Once it becomes cheap enough then religious or similar cults will do it, and the cost of doing isn't a great deal more than colonising the solar system where are are economic benefits.

That assumes reaching 5 light years in say 50 years

However once it's done a few times, then it can't be stopped. If you're going at say 1/1000th of the speed of light (50 years to travel, 450 years to settle and build the next wave is 1% the speed of light) then your successor species will have colonised the galaxy in 100 million years, and we know that hasn't happened.