Stephen Hawking; Aliens Likely to be Hostile.

[Caliga]

Sim Earth was one of the best games ever.

[Jaron]

Spore was awful.

It was:

1) Eat meat or plant
2) Kill or befriend other species
3) Kill or befriend other tribes
4) Kill or befriend other cities
5) "Explore" the galaxy

SNOOZE

[garbon]

No, no...Spore,  I remember now. What ever happened to that?

And I was describing what Spore wasn't.

[garbon]

Sim Earth.  Now there's a game I'd love to see updated.  There aren't many programs I can run to simulate a prehistoric Earth.

Spore had originally been marketed as a bigger and better Sim Earth, but somehow they left it out.

[garbon]

Spore was awful.

It was:

1) Eat meat or plant
2) Kill or befriend other species
3) Kill or befriend other tribes
4) Kill or befriend other cities
5) "Explore" the galaxy

SNOOZE

And you didn't really get to explore, seeing as how every few minutes you had to go stop pirates or save a planet from an ecological disaster.

[Agelastus]

While it is a virtual certainty that alien civilisations have existed and will exist in the Milky Way, the odds of two technological civilisations sharing the same timeframe are vanishingly small.

As for the logic of "peaceful aliens", I am spectacularly unconvinced by it. Colonisation or the hunt for resources seem to me to be the two most likely reasons for interstellar travel. And if it is sublight travel, given the cost and resources that would involve, an alien species could not afford to be nice.

[Fate]

While it is a virtual certainty that alien civilisations have existed and will exist in the Milky Way, the odds of two technological civilisations sharing the same timeframe are vanishingly small.

As for the logic of "peaceful aliens", I am spectacularly unconvinced by it. Colonisation or the hunt for resources seem to me to be the two most likely reasons for interstellar travel. And if it is sublight travel, given the cost and resources that would involve, an alien species could not afford to be nice.

I don't understand you space Columbus freaks. What does the Earth have that makes it desirable enough to spend 10,000 years traveling on a space ship? Really, unobtainium doesn't exist. Second generation and greater star systems with heavy elements are a dime a dozen. Avatar lied to you.

[jimmy olsen]

While it is a virtual certainty that alien civilisations have existed and will exist in the Milky Way, the odds of two technological civilisations sharing the same timeframe are vanishingly small.

As for the logic of "peaceful aliens", I am spectacularly unconvinced by it. Colonisation or the hunt for resources seem to me to be the two most likely reasons for interstellar travel. And if it is sublight travel, given the cost and resources that would involve, an alien species could not afford to be nice.

I don't understand you space Columbus freaks. What does the Earth have that makes it desirable enough to spend 10,000 years traveling on a space ship? Really, unobtainium doesn't exist. Avatar lied to you.

Lets not exaggerate, a fusion powered space ship would cut journey times to a few decades. Throw in cryostasis or a simply long lived species and it's certainly doable.

[Fate]

While it is a virtual certainty that alien civilisations have existed and will exist in the Milky Way, the odds of two technological civilisations sharing the same timeframe are vanishingly small.

As for the logic of "peaceful aliens", I am spectacularly unconvinced by it. Colonisation or the hunt for resources seem to me to be the two most likely reasons for interstellar travel. And if it is sublight travel, given the cost and resources that would involve, an alien species could not afford to be nice.

I don't understand you space Columbus freaks. What does the Earth have that makes it desirable enough to spend 10,000 years traveling on a space ship? Really, unobtainium doesn't exist. Avatar lied to you.

Lets not exaggerate, a fusion powered space ship would cut journey times to a few decades. Throw in cryostasis or a simply long lived species and it's certainly doable.

Yeah, let's not exaggerate. The galaxy is merely 100,000 light years in diameter. At warp 10 that'd only take five years (i saw it on voyager).

[Agelastus]

I don't understand you space Columbus freaks. What does the Earth have that makes it desirable enough to spend 10,000 years traveling on a space ship? Really, unobtainium doesn't exist. Second generation and greater star systems with heavy elements are a dime a dozen. Avatar lied to you.

I notice you rubbished the resources part of my post, without touching the colonisation part.

We have an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. If you can provide evidence that every second star possesses such a world, I will raise my estimate for how likely "peaceful aliens" are. At the moment, we simply don't know how rare such worlds are.

Maybe I shouldn't have edited out the parts of my post that discussed the possibility of methane breathers, who would not want the Earth.

[Eddie Teach]

Lets not exaggerate, a fusion powered space ship would cut journey times to a few decades. Throw in cryostasis or a simply long lived species and it's certainly doable.

A journey to Alpha Centauri perhaps. Highly unlikely that there are any advanced aliens anywhere near that close.

[jimmy olsen]

While it is a virtual certainty that alien civilisations have existed and will exist in the Milky Way, the odds of two technological civilisations sharing the same timeframe are vanishingly small.

As for the logic of "peaceful aliens", I am spectacularly unconvinced by it. Colonisation or the hunt for resources seem to me to be the two most likely reasons for interstellar travel. And if it is sublight travel, given the cost and resources that would involve, an alien species could not afford to be nice.

I don't understand you space Columbus freaks. What does the Earth have that makes it desirable enough to spend 10,000 years traveling on a space ship? Really, unobtainium doesn't exist. Avatar lied to you.

Lets not exaggerate, a fusion powered space ship would cut journey times to a few decades. Throw in cryostasis or a simply long lived species and it's certainly doable.

Yeah, let's not exaggerate. The galaxy is merely 100,000 light years in diameter. At warp 10 that'd only take five years (i saw it on voyager).

Why would anyone travel across the entire galaxy at once. You'd be travel to the nearest star, which is a few light years away.

[Neil]

While it is a virtual certainty that alien civilisations have existed and will exist in the Milky Way, the odds of two technological civilisations sharing the same timeframe are vanishingly small.

As for the logic of "peaceful aliens", I am spectacularly unconvinced by it. Colonisation or the hunt for resources seem to me to be the two most likely reasons for interstellar travel. And if it is sublight travel, given the cost and resources that would involve, an alien species could not afford to be nice.

'The hunt for resources' really isn't that important.  Colonization of a modern, industrialized planet would be rather difficult.

[Viking]

What about giant insects that, you know, lived on Earth?

Why Were Prehistoric Insects Huge?

[grumbler]

'The hunt for resources' really isn't that important.  Colonization of a modern, industrialized planet would be rather difficult.

Indeed.  There are many ways to get resources that would be cheaper and more reliable than wandering around the galaxy trying to conquer alien species.  Hell, limiting demand would be cheaper, one would think.