I propose that extraterrestrial civilizations may use free-floating planets as interstellar transportation to reach, explore and colonize planetary systems.
Is it just me or is that completely idiotic? It's like building a spaceship whose mass is 99.99% inert. Migration is incredibly unlikely to be a thing on interstellar scales unless some kind of magical transport is discovered. That is because, under almost any conceivable schema, it takes less energy and resources to sustain an individual for its entire life than it takes to transport that individual to another solar system. Advanced civilizations may very likely spread to other solar systems, but there's no practical reason to migrate.
> That is because, under almost any conceivable schema, it takes less energy and resources to sustain an individual for its entire life than it takes to transport that individual to another solar system.
I've thought about this in relation to colonizing other planets in our solar system let alone ones in another one. I'm of the opinion that we'd be better off building orbital habitats similar to the ISS and then iterating on those until they can house more people safely, become more and more self-sufficient, and we have the ability to put them into solar orbits and/or making them self-propelled. I always assumed we would populate earth orbit and bases on the moon first, then expand our infrastructure to be able to mine metals from asteroids and start building larger space stations outside of earth's orbit.
If Mars were more Earth-like I could see pushing for that first but I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. There is solid ground we can build on, but the atmosphere is almost non-existent, the radiation is incredibly high, water is scarce, it's a long way away, and there are two gravity wells to deal with. Unless we're talking about terraforming Mars, which is an even larger project than colonizing it, we're still talking basically people living in the equivalent of tin cans.
In terms of people living off of our home planet it seems to me that we could increase the population much faster in space stations and lunar bases than we would be able to do so on Mars.
If I were a billionaire space tech guy, I'd be working toward O'neil cylinders instead of Mars colonization.
I'm not a space scientist or an engineer, though. Or a billionaire, sadly enough.
> If I were a billionaire space tech guy, I'd be working toward O'neil cylinders instead of Mars colonization.
While I agree with you in the longer term, I don’t think we’re even close to ready to build O'Neill cylinders. First thing I’d go for would be a lunar colony. Lots of useful resources, relatively short trip home in emergencies, a way to get experience working in real vacuum, and non-rocket launch systems could already be built there with current tech.
It's just you. There may be various reasons for a civilization to leave its planetary system. Its host star may be dying and turning into red giant. A nearby star may be close to going supernova or hypernova. The civilization may send its own space explorers on a passing by free-floating planet. For example, if the civilization's scientists determine that there is a hypervelocity free-floating planet passing through their Oort cloud and heading to a nearby star, they may send their machines to ride the free-floating planet to that star to study it. Why would not they catch a ride when an opportunity presents itself?
> I propose that extraterrestrial civilizations may use free-floating planets as interstellar transportation to reach, explore and colonize planetary systems
If you can muster enough energy to accelerate a planet, you probably don't need a planet for migration in the first place.
Also, the planets would get cold during the journey. Very cold. You'd better pack a load of welding kits for the brass monkeys.
The Puppeteers took 5 planets with them when they found out about the galactic core explosion. It honestly sounds like the guy who wrote this just finished Niven's known space series.
Not unless you’re orbiting the supernova-ing star. It’s easier to put a big thin metal sheet between your planet and the exploding star to block the radiation, than to evacuate a billion people.
Is it just me or is that completely idiotic? It's like building a spaceship whose mass is 99.99% inert. Migration is incredibly unlikely to be a thing on interstellar scales unless some kind of magical transport is discovered. That is because, under almost any conceivable schema, it takes less energy and resources to sustain an individual for its entire life than it takes to transport that individual to another solar system. Advanced civilizations may very likely spread to other solar systems, but there's no practical reason to migrate.