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At most points in time resources are scarce and not all life can be supported. At those times beings with a tendency to say “them” will give way to beings who most strongly assert “us”.

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Comments like yours make me think that sci-fi shows (and a lot of literary sci-fi) like Star Trek did a grave disservice to our conception of advanced spacefaring civilizations. They were always focused on alien planets, assuming that once a race was able to travel the stars that they would still chain themselves to a gravity well. It's like imagining an industrial society where everyone still lives on a farm like their agricultural predecessors. Nothing makes sense if you start with that assumption, living space becomes scarce, utilities are hard to provide, travel is cumbersome and a lot of things simply aren't possible. The same way that industrial societies urbanized and concentrated in cities, spacefaring civilizations will move to orbital structures that allow them to design their environments. These may be located near planets the same way cities are located near important geographical features but there will also be many that are only in orbit around their host star. Habitable worlds will become the equivalent of bucolic countryside estates or national parks. Most industry will be located around lesser gravity wells such as moons or minor planets where mined materials are easy to transport to orbit and there aren't biospheres or atmospheres to worry about. It would take a long time and a lot of expansion to exhaust the materials in a solar system.

In his novel Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson challenged this view by suggesting that at the small scale of orbital structures, there may be insurmountable obstacles to biological life, like the buildup of salt through waste. His ultimate conclusion was that “life is a planetary phenomenon” (and we should take better care of the planet we have).

Living in bunkers is no fun, I love cities but even those are bigger than the best generation ship.

In his novel Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson challenged the view that works of fiction should be well written and function as entertainment.

If I remember correctly, the novel was concerned with a generation ship travelling to a distant star. This is not the same as space habitats in a solar system where there are plenty of sources and sinks for all materials involved in the maintenance of a habitat.

I think he modeled his habitats as large ecosystems as well in the novel. That's not strictly necessary and would simplify the design a lot.

Also, it was a fictional story so not the best source for information. Which is kind of proving my point about sci-fi messing up everyone's conception of what the future could hold.

“You mean we all came from Earth?” said Nikolai, unbelieving. “Yes,” the holo said kindly. “The first true settlers in space were born on Earth—produced by sexual means. Of course, hundreds of years have passed since then. You are a Shaper. Shapers are never born.” “Who lives on Earth now?” “Human beings.” “Ohhhh,” said Nikolai, his falling tones betraying a rapid loss of interest. --- Twenty Evocations (1984) Bruce Sterling

The scarcity view of life is so deeply ingrained in some of us that its become an entire world view. Some folks cant even imagine a post scarcity society.

Try though. Space is mind blowingly large and anything with the ability to traverse interstellar space alteady has access to unlimited resources and energy, likely closer than us. We live in a tiny backwater of the galaxy.

We literally have nothing of value to such a civilization. Gold and diamonds a just more rocks to any serious space faring civilizations. Energy is also unlimited and free.

Unless they find us delicious our only value would likely be an exchange of knowledge.

Some sci fi author (I forget who) pointed out that in a space faring society, the most valuable materials are biological materials. Once you have access to comets and planets, you'll have, for all intents and purposes, an infinite supply of gold, diamond, ruby, etc.

Wood however... You're not gonna find a lot of wood in space.

There is absolutely no reason for alien life to have evolved the same biological materials that we have. But also, a space faring species that can build an AI probe capable of remaining functioning for the many years an interstellar journey takes, is also likely to be capable of building habitats that can grow their biological materials. It'd be much easier than shipping those materials over from another star.

Yep. It's all about mass at those scales. There will never be a time when it makes sense to ship giant habitats full of water, and oxygen, and meat around.

Brains will be uploaded to machines, or human descended AI's will will be built and tasked with exploring the places it's unsafe or too time consuming for us to visit directly. The square jawed men with laser guns will have to stay at home and watch. Maybe those AI's will be built to start cloning humans once they find a good spot or something, but it's never going to make sense to ship squishy meat sacks and the metric tons of accoutrements required to keep them alive all over unless/until we find a way around the speed of light or perfect hibernation.

Quite right! They probably wouldn't have wood, but we do!

They might want the wood though, and they might not know how to grow it. From there we can see 2 scenarios. The likelier one hopefully being trade: we could probably teach them to grow wood, and also provide them with seeds, perhaps on exchange for some of their space-faring tech.

Alternatively there's the pessimist scenario, where they're not interested in trading for it, we're not willing to give it freely, and so war ensues.

Personally I'd just give them a few pine-cones and explain basic horticulture as a gesture of good faith, I guess the end result is rather contingent on which human they talk to.

Why would they need our permission to take it? They can grab the seeds from anywhere on the planet, and they can just watch any farmer and/or forest for a couple of years and see how it works.

Of course this is putting aside any ideas of deciphering our books or tapping into the internet. Not much we'd be able to do to species that can travel the stars.

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