http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-90-of-waking-hours-spent-staring-at-glowing,2747/
The Warhammer 40k universe is obviously fictional but its borrowed a lot of elements from the history of humanity and it’s startling to see just how brutal we could possibly be in the time to come. I still feel that we may advance to the level of a star faring race while still holding bigoted and xenophobic beliefs which would cause us too enslave and/or exterminate any other sentient life forms out there.
As **Mijin **has said, neuroscience is growing at a clip and there is a good chance we will be able to program ourselves out of our most destructive impulses by the time this happens. The star trek universe where 24th century people still have the same brains and biology of cavemen seems totally unrealistic to me.
And slavery has to have value in order for people to do it. Machines and robots are more productive than slaves, and any society run on slaves would cause more problems than the slaves were worth. That isn’t even factoring in the moral concerns people have about slavery. I don’t think the world would fight so long and so hard to abolish slavery and embrace humanism and human rights just to engage in slavery and genocide on another planet.
If we humans were desperate, or we had sunk large amounts of money into colonization of a particular planet, I could see us pushing aliens off their land. But I don’t see why we would engage in mass slavery or genocide. If anything we would probably offer them technological and material advances in exchange for land. It is better that way, because then you don’t have constant warfare between the two parties.
I think we are way past obvious slavery, but subtle exploitation as in wage slaves, unbalanced barter, differing cultural understanding about the philosophy of ownership, etc is still well within the realm of possibility.
Based on history, I vote “D” - all of the above - depending on what humans thought benefitted them most at the time and what we could get away with.
In order to get to a habitable planet of another star, we would have to develop such technologies that nothing on that planet, including the planet itself, would be of essential use to us.
Or in other words, if we need the planet, we’re still not ready to go.
If we’re able to go there, we don’t need to.
Assumes facts not currently in evidence. Besides which, any species needs room to grow.
There’s no way to create living room, we have to go find it and develop it.
Spoilsport. 
The big assumption here is that we use neuroscience to program out the impulses you see as destructive.
But for all we know, the Hitlers and Stalins of WW IV (circa 2145) are the ones to first implement wide-scale neuro-modification programs. Their super-loyal, super-genocidal populations win the war and promptly get to work on space-faring, since they programmed themselves to live without creature comforts and to seek unlimited expansion of resources and political control.
Or maybe the super-weapons of WW IV actually wipe out all multi-cellular life, leaving nothing but AI and bacteria behind. There are two basic kinds of AIs: the ones designed to make human life wonderful, full of ponies and rainbows and sex fantasies and the ones designed for warfare, to make human life safe, even if you did accidentally kill them all off in the process. Now, you tell me: which set of AIs come to dominate the new world order? And how committed to interstellar peace and racial diversity are they?
Any kind of certainty regarding the motivations of interstellar travelers is pure delusion. Technology is as likely to bring out the worst in us as the best.
If 100 years of science fiction have taught us anything, it’s that interstellar space exploration will be exactly like the Age of Exploration here on Earth, except IN SPACE.
We’ll have space swords and lasers instead of primitive earth swords and muskets, but same deal. Space ships will work pretty much like sailing ships, it will take about the same amount of time to travel between star systems as it took to travel between continents with sailing ships. Laser and missile battles between spaceships will work pretty much like cannon broadsides, so we’ll have plenty of opportunity for boarding parties and swordfights and space weather in the form of nebulas and meteors. Communication will be limited to the speed of travel, so we’ll have loose decentralized governments with plenty of opportunity for the locals to make crucial decisions, but nevertheless will span multiple star systems.
We’ll have space aristocrats, space missionaries, space traders, space pirates, and space slavery. Space explorers will be looking for space gold, space spices, and other forms of space booty to bring back to Earth, all in the name of the space Queen and space Jesus. And alien species will be pretty much exactly like native tribes of various non-European continents and islands, with various tentacles and pincers glued on, ready to play their part as space slaves, space rebels, space heathens, or space gurus that have much to teach us. Also each planet will have one ecosystem, one language, one culture, one religion, and one technology level. Also each planet will have exactly two predators–a medium size one to threaten the explorers, and a really big one to eat the medium size one right when the explorers have given up hope.
Yawn. If we want to tell ourselves stories about the age of exploration, why can’t we tell ourselves stories about the actual age of exploration?
Thing is, interstellar travel will be nothing like the age of sail. I have no idea what it will actually be like, but if we have it, it won’t be analogous to any sort of system we’re familiar with, any more than modern air travel is just like traveling by horse and buggy, except through the air.
We have no idea how to travel through interstellar space. Using real world technology that doesn’t include exotic concepts like space warps or wormholes or inertialess drives or other handwavy made-up stuff, we’re talking rockets that use antimatter to generate rocket thrust. Which means it’s going to take centuries to travel to Alpha Centauri. And even that sort of thing will require technological advancement that is unimaginable. And even then, any sort of trade between Earth and Alpha Centauri would be pointless, because what sort of cargo could justify a hundred year voyage through empty space on a craft that would require the equivalent of trillions of 2013 dollars to construct and fuel?
The only way such a real-world spaceship could be constructed we’ve advanced so far scientifically, politically, economically and technologically that we can waste trillions of dollars on a one-way mission to Alpha Centauri for fun, because we think it would be cool.
Or, tomorrow some physicist invents a space drive or space warp or space gate that works on totally new physical principles that we haven’t even imagined today, and then we colonize the galaxy by Christmas.
Except if we colonize the galaxy by magic space magic, then there’s no telling what the economics of space colonization will actually be like. How much does it cost to move X kilograms Y light years? What sort of capital investment is needed? How much energy? How long does it take? Five minutes? A year? When does this magic box get invented? Tomorrow? In the far future world of the year 2000? One hundred years from now?
It’s funny, because when science fiction writers imagine a future Earth without interstellar travel, they imagine computers and biotechnology and robots and cybernetics and nanomaterials and AI, and on and on. And when they imagine exploring other planets, it’s basically the Age of Sail In Space, where people don’t even have cell phones.
And of course the reason for this is that in science fiction you want to examine certain things. So if you want to think about cloning and genetics, you set your story in something like the modern day, except with cloning and genetics plus whatever window dressing you need to show the readers that this is the future. If you want to talk about space travel, then all the other stuff about genetics and cultural change is the sideshow, just thrown in to add flavor.
So no, we’re not going to recapitulate the past. The most likely outcome is that we stay here on Earth and in this Solar system, until the human race goes extinct. Maybe that’s soon, maybe it’s millions of years in the future. But interstellar travel is, like, really hard. It’s not as easy as sailing a wooden ship from Europe to the Caribbean. And if we have the magic technology to make it that easy, then the other magic technology we have will make the future civilization that is capable of star travel unrecognizable to people here in 2013.
Which facts? In order to get to another solar system, you have to be able to live without a solar system for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. If you can do that, you don’t need to go there. If you can’t do that, you can’t get there.
Actually, if there isn’t, then that’s another reason you can’t go. In order to get to another solar system, you need to be able to create new living space independent of Earth.
Colonisation of distant solar systems is not a solution to lack of space here. Sending a handful of colonists off across the galaxy isn’t going to free up any room here - and mass migration is orders of magnitude less likely to happen than sending a colony ship (which itself is nigh impossible).
We can’t colonize the galaxy by Christmas!
If we do…how will Santa bring me a pony? {POUTS}
No, of course you don’t ease population pressures by shipping people in bulk to other planets.
I guess I’m done with this thread. It never made much sense and now it’s just in a rut.
Those are valid points. An alien race run by someone like Alexander the Great or Genghis Kahn, who wants empire expansion for its own sake (as opposed to gain control of finite land or resources like most wars on earth are fought), could be extremely hostile to life on earth.
I think the OP is postulating that some form of FTL is invented.
Sorry - I guess I was threadshitting really. I didn’t mean to do that.
Your hijack is a relatively common theme in science fiction, almost its own subgenre.
I think that, rather than focus exclusively on the American scenario, considerations should look more at the situations of enslavement of local populations by local populations, indentured labor (Chinese triad-type things), sex trade… in order for us to be able to enslave them, those people would need to be dumber than us. I can see the same kind of person who gets his kicks from raping a mentally handicapped person going “oh yes! Christmas!” when a planet full of such people is discovered.
And…what? That makes it more or less plausible?
(And I recognized it was a potential hijack, why I put it in a spoiler box.)
Yes, they’ll rape our women, steal our oxen and get us all working on their plantations.
Yes, but the whether it makes economic sense to enslave aliens depends highly on the exact specifications of this method of interstellar travel.
How long does it take to travel between Earth and Planet X? How much does your interstellar conveyance cost? How much does it cost to operate? How much can it carry? Can it scale up and down?
And what exactly is there on Planet X that you somehow can’t get on Earth, or Mars, or Vesta? Can you walk around on Planet X without the equivalent of a space suit?
And what exactly is Earth like, now that we’re living in the future? Did all technological progress stop in 2023, when we invented the interstellar conveyance? Do we somehow have a social, political and economic system straight out of some past era, only IN SPACE?
The point I was trying to make is that very often the answers in science fictional stories are ones made so that interstellar travel closely resembles sailing ships from the age of exploration. Ships are about the same size as sailing ships, they cost about the same, have the same sort of crew, they take as long to travel between Earth and Tau Ceti as it takes to sail from London to Peru, and so on.
Except that’s just silly. Why can’t traveling from Earth to Tau Ceti be more like taking a 727 between San Jose and LA? Or riding a unicyle from Capetown to Tierra del Fuego? Or, say, a Saturn V between Cape Canaveral and the Sea of Tranquility?
Of course interstellar travel, if it ever happens, won’t be much like riding a unicycle cross country. So why would it be like sailing on a caravel?
Yes it is, but it makes a good story, as Poul Anderson’s Polesthenitic (sp) League of interstellar traders.
That’s a good example. Nicholas van Rijn’s “Interstellar Spice & Liquors” transports rare things at great costs.