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You are not very far from what could be the reality. According to some research the Solar System has 10% less hydrogen than other galaxies, so Bussard ramjets will have an harder time

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What if dark matter turns out the key to a decent space drive? There appear to be galaxies without it (a good reason for believing it exists where there is evidence) and so any aliens there would be SOL.

Astonishingly enough, you might not be far off. That is the operating principle behind the Alcubierre Drive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Edit: Apologies, it seems it does not in fact use dark matter.

The Alcubierre drive relies on negative matter, not dark matter.

Unfortunately, Alcubierre doesn't use dark matter. It uses negative mass (or even imaginary mass) matter. Dark Matter is believed to have regular positive mass (if it were negative mass, we'd be wondering why galaxies seemed to have less matter than they should).

The existence of negative mass exotic matter remains an open question.

No doubt stolen by the untrustworthy Andromedites!

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