This thread got me to thinking: if a peaceful extraterrestrial multigenerational colony ship with limited offensive capabilities were to somehow find itself in Earth orbit without enough fuel to make it to Venus or backtrack to Mars and decided to try and initiate first contact with us, how do you think they would go about it?
Assuming that they’re humanoid and live in the same climates we do, where do believe they would eventually set down and what government do you believe they would ultimately contact?
The most logical course of action would be to move as slowly as possible and to stay in international waters to avoid possible missunderstandings, and to approach the largest multinational organization (i.e. the UN) in order to minimize thoughts of trickery and favoritism.
Of course that assumes they have a general understanding of the state of the world and how humans tick. If they don’t, things could very possibly get extremely messy.
And that they think even remotely like we do. You know, what might be more effective would be to contact the leader of a megacorporation, share some tech, get some land deeded to them, then approach the UN. Rule number two. Always have a backup plan. Maybe xenoform the moon, too.
Let’s assume they know a lot about us. In that case, they would probably contact a government with technical know-how and that could be trusted. Most likely a Western democratic nation.
If they have no idea and they pick at random, well, they could end up in some dictator’s prison where they are tortured for their secrets. Or killed by a mob of xenophobic religious fundamentalists who think they are demons. If they landed in Saudi Arabia they’d be in big trouble.
Now, I’m a big fan of western liberal democracy, but that’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? It seems like they’d be just as likely to pick China.
Of course, we have to narrow down some variables- it’s very possible that their thinking would be so ‘alien’ to us that any guess would be incorrect.
But, color me pessimistic…i don’t ever really see something like that occuring without humanity screwing it up. we have trouble enough keeping the peace amongsat ourselves, and i don’t see how any one nation making first contact would not try to use it as leverage against its rivals.
I’m predicting a wholesale orgy of destruction, myself. It’s just the romantic in me.
Hmmm…my guess is that if they can travel across billions of miles of space and sustain a closed ecology within a multigenerational starship for any serious length of time, then they’ve got some smarts.
I’m also guessing that they’ll play it safe and NOT land anywhere until initial contact is made, a meaningful dialogue is established, and a specific invitation (or permission) is given to them to land. I doubt that they’d just touch down on an obviously massively populated planet without at least announcing themselves first.
As far as the actual announcing goes, the best and safest bet would be an open broadcast to the entire planet. That way they cannot be seem to be playing favorites, and no one nation can use them as leverage against the others.
Actually, now that I think about it, the aliens wouldn’t even really need to land at all. They could just park themselves in a geostationary orbit above international waters, and conduct any communictions/discussions/negotiations from there. It doesn’t cost them any fuel to just sit there, and actually landing on the surface would expose them to unnecessary danger, and would actually expend more energy.
But this did happen. They contacted the most advanced government with the most know-how. They shared the tech and all but then…
the Nazi’s lost the war and they were tortured to death in Russian an US science labs for their secrets.
I think the first thing to do would be to abduct some unimportant nobodies and probe them, anally. While that is happening, perhaps a bit of decorative crop destruction and a few telepathic messages of doom about invisible planets on collision course with Earth. After this, setting up peaceful intercourse with humans should all be very simple.
One way to think about this is what would we do if we were the aliens landing on a technological inferior, but industrialized planet that had some limitted space capability. Assuming we had some insight into the political organization, but no ability to communicate meaningfully, I’m sure we’d contact the biggest, broadest political entity available (unless it was some totalitarian gov’t) and simply try to get our ability to communicate up and running. What to do next? I need to think about that more…
I immediately thought of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End, which I think had the right idea. In the book, the alien race, the Overlords, made first contact with the UN, and positioned a ship over every major city on Earth without ever landing anywhere.
There was no anal probing, but you can’t have everything.
They should pick some crappy nation, and announce they’ve made a deal to take it over, and then set up shop there. Picking the US is stupid because every redneck will want to shoot them invading ETs. ( i know i’d be armed 24/7. Freakin’ aliens, “I come in peace” is the biggest lie in the universe)
Asked what he thought of the peaceful and highly intelligent aliens that landed in his small West Virginia town, Balle_M replied, “Tasted like chicken.”
No matter who they contacted, the US would immediately take charge of the entire affair and settle them in Montana, Wyoming, and possibly the Dakotas, where they could be isolated from contact with the press (they wouldn’t fit in Guantanamo, after all…)
The assumption that the aliens arrive in the solar system with technological wonders and tactical superiority to the human race is not necessarily valid.
The alien spacecraft may have been constructed by a technology only a few hundred years ahead of our own…
the crew may have been travelling for centuries, breathing recycled air, eating recycled food, and they are likely to have used a great deal of their fuel to decelerate from the interstellar cruising speed (perhaps 0.1c) with little to spare…
after hundreds of years, the aliens might have suffered mutinies, revolutions or other neuroses due to their confined status.
their first priority on arrival on this system would be to gather volatiles and solar energy, so that they can replenish their on-board stocks (and finally drink water that had not been recycled a million times).
They could be disappointed to find that the most habitable planet has a medium to high-tech civilisation on it-
they might want to observe from a safe distance for a few decades-
they might even ask us for help.
They would have relatively little to offer us in this scenario.
**I understand where you’re coming from, but I would have thought that water would be the one thing that was the same whether recycled once or a million times - water doesn’t wear out.
I think truly sustainable spaceflight and the ability to create a sustained ecosystem in space would be pretty significant. As you say it might only be 100 years beyond us, but that’s like saying that offering a 747 and nuclear power to someone in 1900 wouldn’t be very much.
The fact that they can create a self-sustaining system suggest that a desert area might be a good settlement space. Allows them to be moderately isolated from people and doesn’t bring any of the probelms of taking land from current inhabitants (Israel doesn’t bode well for these experiments.)
I would vote for Gobi or Simpson deserts. Both sparsely populated, both with stable governments.
What do you think of this idea? If I were a member of an alien species, one of the purposes of space travel would be to study other civilizations. I think that it is generally accepted in anthropology that to best way to get a feel for the way a civilization works, an outside observer must not be detected. I would bet that if aliens do visit us, we would never know for a long time. They may already have their study under way.