zifnab25 [he/him, any]

I had a game in Middle School that involved describing how I was supposed to arrange a ladder to climb up the side of a wall. We went back and forth for over an hour, because my DM kept insisting I couldn’t turn the ladder sideways.

Now, if my players want to deliver a particularly clever bit of prose or describe a novel engineering technique, I just give them a +2 on the roll and that’s that.

“What is the return on investment?”

In the case of 3Body,

That’s only very loosely a “profitable” enterprise. Certainly, the initial generations won’t see any kind of profit simply due to the length of the journey.

The same principle applies to other planets – if it’s profitable, it will be pursued.

But a practical ROI can only really be measured within a single lifetime. And extraplanetary travel will always have a return of $0, as anyone deciding to perform extra-planetary exploration today will not see the benefits for generations. One might argue a more Ursula LeGuin-esque view of interstellar colonization - as a struggle for survival that simply expands beyond the frontiers of a single planet. But then, what we’re really talking about with Martian colonization or extra-Solar travel is some kind of politically or ecologically motivated Exodus. Because the economic exploitation of the New World was mostly just hit-and-run raids early on. The Virginia Company was an abject failure as an economic exercise. It cost far more to maintain than it yielded.

The real motivating force behind early colonization was the 30 Years War and the flight of the Protestants. What you’re ultimately going to need are some Huguenots with space ships. Even then, the real labor force in colonization were indentured servants and slaves. And there’s not going to be a Trans-Atlantic Triangle to move people from Earth to the spacial frontier, because… Its space. There’s nothing out there.

Cynical take: To kill us. Dark forest style.

As a sci-fi explanation for the Fermi Paradox, I found Dark Forest Theory compelling and thrilling.

As an actual IRL explanation for a lack of First Contact, I’m totally underwhelmed. Space is big. The speed of light heavily truncates both travel and communication. Extraterrestrial life certainly isn’t common, as evidenced by all of the planets in our own Solar System that are lifeless.

It should be noted that

That strikes me as highly implausible.

Other thoughts: If aliens showed up it we wouldn’t detect them in atmo, not as a quick fly by. We’d detect something huge like engines or something going real fast way out in space. Like on the edge of the system. If they were in our atmosphere they would make themselves known one way or another at that point.

The sheer amount of energy for super-luminal travel would suggest we either can’t see them or can’t miss them.

But one posits a degree of technological advancement so beyond our current scope that we can barely conceive of it. And the other posits a kind-of soft ceiling to scientific advancement, such that alien life just can’t be an issue even in another thousand lifetimes.

If first contact is anything, it will more likely be communicative than a literal fly by. Humans tuning into the extraterrestrial equivalent of AM radio will be the first to discover an advanced off-world civilization.

Going back to 3Body, one of the most compelling plot beats for me was

Like, that’s what I imagine a real human/alien interaction would look like for… centuries. Long before either saw the other one face-to-face.