UFOs: Sorry, Interstellar Space Travel Is Bunk!

"UFOs: Sorry, Interstellar Space Travel Is Bunk!"," No exploration; no migration; no colonization.


That's probably true if contemplating intergalactic (between galaxies) space where distances to your nearest galactic neighbour are measured in millions of light years; that's certainly not true for interplanetary (between planets) space where distances to your nearest neighbour are measured in light minutes to light hours; now that's leaving a question mark over the middle ground - interstellar (between stars) where distances to your neighbour are measured in several light years.
 We can't expect any interplanetary visitors, those locals within our solar system, with itchy tentacles desiring to explore the local neighbourhood of which we're a part of, to come calling.


Visitors from other galaxies are out of the running as well because as noted above the distances needed to be crossed are many orders of magnitude greater relative to short-hop interplanetary trips.


With no existing intelligent non-terrestrials of the local kind that can visit us, and extraterrestrials from other galaxies confined to those galaxies, well that still leaves several billion of stars in our own galaxy which E.T
 might phone if away from home.
 Towards the inner regions of our galaxy (like the inner regions, the CBD, of our cities), stars aren't as far apart as where we (humans) are out in the suburbs, even perhaps out in the boondocks.


Regardless, whether you are in our galactic CBD or out in the suburbs or even in the boondocks, I maintain it doesn't take all that long to get from one (say the CBD) to the other (the boondocks).
 Galactic CBD to galactic boondocks; well it's all obviously way too far and takes way too long to get from there (wherever that is, say the galactic CBD) to here (Planet Earth; location: galactic suburbs if not the boondocks).
 If you don't want to think about it for yourself, then see below!

Unfortunately for the sceptics, fact number one is that E. T
 doesn't need any wormhole or theoretical 'warp drive' or other 'Star Trek' type superluminal velocity techno-babble to explore the galaxy and boldly go where no alien has gone before.
 There's lots of time available to explore and colonize starting a few light years outward at a time.
 Repeat as often as required.

 Such velocities, while pretty fast by our current abilities, shouldn't be beyond the means of a technologically advanced race.
 Our galaxy is ten billion years old.


Regardless of that bit of mathematics, UFO sceptics would still have you believe that interstellar space travel is at best highly improbable, and at worst impossible.


Hogwash! I can not believe this old and totally outdated chestnut is still bandied about since there's terrestrial equivalents and even a human parallel.
 Planet Earth was really BIG to human society too many centuries ago, but that didn't stop our planet being explored from pole to pole, even if individual journeys took many years.


While it's proved relatively easy for humans to colonize Planet Earth, humans cannot travel to the stars because we can't travel fast enough within our short life-spans to make the journey from start to finish, and I assume here that if you start the journey you want to be around to finish the journey.
 If you recall from mythology, the cosmic and sky 'gods' were (at least from a human perspective) as close to immortal as makes no odds.


Aliens could have a very long natural lifespan relative to us carbon-based terrestrial bipeds.


What if you have an alien race with life-spans way, way surpassing ours? The idiotic assumption by the anti-UFO boldly going skeptics is, in a very anthropological way, that E. T
 of necessity must have a lifespan equal to that of humans, or is confined to technologies equivalent to our own 21st Century technologies.

5 billion years old before Planet Earth (plus Sun and associated solar system) even formed out of interstellar gas, dust and associated debris.
 There's a possible likely alternative to a naturally longer life span relative to humans: what of a bit of the old fashion genetic engineering to increase life expectancy? Or there's the likelihood of enhanced bioengineering (part flesh; part machine) to accomplish the same goal.


Genetic or other forms of bioengineering could artificially extend life-spans by many orders of magnitude.
 Given advances in artificial body parts for humans, albeit it hip replacements or dentures or even mundane tooth fillings, that's certainly a valid possibility if one extrapolates ahead from today to mere decades to centuries ahead.
 One obviously thinks of Data from ""Star Trek: The Next Generation"", or something akin to the original TV's ""Battlestar Galactica"" Cylons.
 We've made a start already down this path.
 It's just that a Cylon is a lot more sophisticated.
 Since AI is nearly immortal (relative to flesh-and-blood), that takes care of travel time arguments, and the possible environments fit for relative easy exploration (colonization?) are expanded greatly.


There's the standard sci-fi scenarios of the multi-generation starship or hibernation that passes the time away without much additional aging.

 Put your spaceship on autopilot and sleep the long journey away.


There's another sci-fi staple that could get E. T
 from there to here.
 While I feel that's an unlikely concept, especially for exploration, it might not be quite so far out if the objective is interstellar colonization.
 Maybe, just maybe, a sort of warp drive, faster-than-light spaceship is possible.
 I wouldn't want to wager any money on it, but I'd be less than open-minded not to admit the possibility, however remote.
 Maybe, just maybe, an advanced alien civilization has the ways and means to manipulate such objects and forces to facilitate easy travel in space (and time travel too maybe).


But one doesn't need such extreme possibilities.
 It's like migrating from New York City to Sydney, Australia.
 So once here, our quasi-immortal, technologically advanced E. T
 (yesteryear the 'gods' of mythology; today UFOs) sets up shop, say some sort of artificial space colony out in the asteroid belt, maybe even a lunar outpost.
 So in a roundabout way, one interstellar journey by E. T
 from somewhere else in our galaxy, morphs into just short-hop interplanetary journeys from that point on.


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