“True... at the same time, they didn’t extend themselves so far beyond their home bases that they couldn’t get supplies. Doing something at interstellar removes is a whole different story, especially when warp travel isn’t actually possible.”
Humans made the transition from a stone age culture to interplanetary exploration in only 10,000 years. Light can transit a distance of 100,000 light years across the width of the Milky Way Galaxy in 100,000 years. Asteroids utilized as mobile habitats can be used to transport extraterrestrial cultures throughout the galaxy and between local galaxies. When accelerated to one-hundredth of the speed of light, such an asteroidal habitat can transit the entire width of the Milky Way Galaxy in about 10,000,000 (10 Million) years. This same trip could be accomplished at such sublight speeds 100 times in each billion years, and more than 500 times since the Sun, Earth, and Solar system were formed from an earlier supernova. Extraterrestrial cultures arising after and before the Sun, Earth, and Solar System were formed have had more than enough time to use sub-light interstellar travel to colonize major areas of this galaxy. This is especially true in the event an earlier culture founded an inorganic cybernetic culture. Any culture that has solved the problems of using the asteroids as their habitat and major source of resources take their bases of supplies with them in their interstellar and perhaps their inter-galactic travels.
Supplying a motivation to a culture far in advance of ours, without any information on that culture is:
A)Clearly Anthropomorphic
B)Baseless Speculation
c)Fun to argue about?
DK
Extrapolating our technology to theirs...speed of light barriers, expansion problems, etc. is the same.
Um, no. Delicate and finicky machines have been sent. Exploration in person, no.