*ping*
Thanks fieldmarshaldj. I very much doubt that there's some kind of interplanetary version of the UN. It's more likely that there are loads of planets to colonize, making conflict an unnecessary risk. And it would not surprise me that there are some species which work as go-betweens, although I wonder if interplanetary trade ever really makes sense, regardless of their tranportation systems. Now, back in with the usual template:
"But I am not really willing to accept your premise, because it may well be that the means of communications they have are of a kind that we do not know how to receive, and that they would not have the means of communicating with sufficiently powerful radio or optical signals. That is something which, technologically, is too difficult for them but they would have some other means we would not recognize." -- Thomas J. Gold, 'Communication with Extraterrestial Intelligence' (Sagan, ed)
"To consider the Earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet, only one grain will grow." -- Metrodorus, 4th c BC Greek philosopher
"Heaven and earth are large, yet in the whole of space they are but as a small grain of rice. How unreasonable it would be to suppose that, besides the heaven and earth which we can see, there are no other heavens and no other earths." -- Teng Mu, 13th c AD Chinese philosopher