Colonizing inhabited alien planets. (Hypothetical)

[Tialok]

May god have mercy on their souls.

[Kuntantee]

Except that's not my logic, you just made up a strawman. And the fact that you think there is no such thing as higher scientific understanding is laughable. Read some history, people used to have little understanding of life. Some thought that life came from a pervasive aura, they had a lower scientific understanding, we have a higher one.

We are talking about now or future. In both cases, it is guaranteed to have fast communication means. The earlier difference between scientific levels of different nations was mostly due to very slow communication channels. The "logic" you consider "plausible" (alright, not your logic) seems to be produced out of ignorance.

[Adam Jensen]

Does that planet have oil?

[Mihalik]

Does that planet have oil?

Let's go with a yes. :P

[Lothaeryn]

Let's go with a yes. :P

Then we will have warp drives in 10 years, WOOT WOOT!

[Cosmic Janitor]

Does that planet have oil?

We just made physics bend over backwards to get there, not an ice cubes chance in hell we still rely on oil ...

[zealo]

Any such contact would likely be bloody and violent. Humans innately have a fear of the unknown, even more so in a hypothetical scenario with actual aliens.

[Kuntantee]

Let's go with a yes. :P

Then they need to be liberated.

[Osmeric]

We just made physics bend over backwards to get there, not an ice cubes chance in hell we still rely on oil ...

And if you believe in conservation of energy, the energy cost of shipping oil through space will exceed its chemical energy content many times.

Also, there's the little matter that our own solar system is loaded with enormous amounts of hydrocarbons. It's the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere that's weird on a cosmic scale.

[Mihalik]

Also, there's the little matter that our own solar system is loaded with enormous amounts of hydrocarbons. It's the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere that's weird on a cosmic scale.

As I pointed out before, in the Deus Ex Machina scenario where travel is inexpensive and relatively fast, resource extraction in an Earth like environment could be significantly cheaper than on Jovian or Saturnine moons or in the Kuiper Belt.

[Osmeric]

As I pointed out before, in the Deus Ex Machina scenario where travel is inexpensive and relatively fast, resource extraction in an Earth like environment could be significantly cheaper than on Jovian or Saturnine moons or in the Kuiper Belt.

Well, your DEM scenario transfers mass between points of widely different gravitational potential. If you believe in conservation of energy, either this will give you all the energy you need, or the energy input needed would dwarf the energy content of chemical fuels being transported. In any case, mining hydrocarbons would make little sense.

[Mihalik]

Well, your DEM scenario transfers mass between points of widely different gravitational potential. If you believe in conservation of energy, either this will give you all the energy you need, or the energy input needed would dwarf the energy content of chemical fuels being transported. In any case, mining hydrocarbons would make little sense.

Ok. Given.

Let's suppose the material on the other side we could harvest wouldn't be necessarily hydrocarbons but some form of accessible and abundant exotic matter. (I just didn't want to go all Frank Herbert's Spice on this thread)

But even in the case you described, hydrocarbons and other stuff like rare earth metals could have different applications that would still make them valuable.

[Deleted]

tbh i can see many scenarios happening varying from them being wiped out from orbit to us co-existing benevolently and even uplifting them.

But there will always be a vast power differential between us, leading to tensions.

From our perspective there are the ethical and moral concerns about interfering and to what extend. do we have the right to wipe them out? do we have the right to educate them and basically usurp their culture and steal their own chance to develop? what if they start seeing us as gods, is that okay, how do we deal with that? there will be the temptation to use them for cheap labor and stuff, is that giving them a opportunity or is that slavery/abuse? stuff like that.

From their perspective they might get afraid of us for a variety of reasons. they might (grow to) think we are devils that have come to destroy they way of life or environment. If they accept our education they might start to question our methods once they reach a industrial era, like why did we take the pace we did, why didn't you give us x or y right away, it could have saved many lives, etc. In general once educated they might start to ask the same ethical and moral questions as we had to years/centuries before when we first arrived, and they might reach a different answer then us. They might demand military technology do defend themselves from us if push comes to shove, do we give it to them or not? if we do violence based on xenophobia and fear might results, if we don't they might think we don;t trust them and the result might be the same.

And if everything goes well, after a couple of centuries they will be on the same level as us, what then? give them our citizenship? let them start their own space empire? start a federation esque thing?

[nextormento]

Just drop a monolith in some of their moons and come visit when they find it.

[Osmeric]

Ok. Given.

Let's suppose the material on the other side we could harvest wouldn't be necessarily hydrocarbons but some form of accessible and abundant exotic matter. (I just didn't want to go all Frank Herbert's Spice on this thread)

But even in the case you described, hydrocarbons and other stuff like rare earth metals could have different applications that would still make them valuable.

Rare earths, despite their name, aren't terribly rare.

There are maybe two things that would be worth exporting across interstellar distances: information/knowledge, and beamed energy. Very large lasers could be directed across light years of space with fairly small apertures (100s of km). The latter would only start making sense once closer-to-home energy sources (like, all the Sun's output) had already been tapped though. Beaming to settlements in interstellar space, far from stars, could make sense.

[Deleted]

Rare earths, despite their name, aren't terribly rare.

There are maybe two things that would be worth exporting across interstellar distances: information/knowledge, and beamed energy. Very large lasers could be directed across light years of space with fairly small apertures (100s of km). The latter would only start making sense once closer-to-home energy sources (like, all the Sun's output) had already been tapped though. Beaming to settlements in interstellar space, far from stars, could make sense.

This beaming you are talking about sounds as something coming out of Star Treck franchise.
No today's laser is able to cross the space to Mars, what's there to speak of something light years away. All the distortion from floating objects and dust clouds, planet gravity fields, interferention from coherent light sources will make it impossible to beam anything farther away from Jupiter, provided you have the energy source required to shoot something at such distance in the first place.

Besides, any resource could become very interesting to tap on, even if not to transport it to Earth. But instead to use it to build settlement on that other planet.
For instance if our technology at that point is nuclear and we can produce hand-carried nuclear reactors, any source of uranium or plutonium will be very interesting for the settlers. Imagine what it will be if they find a large source of those elements under some local tribe living grounds.

[PC2]

No today's laser is able to cross the space to Mars, what's there to speak of something light years away. All the distortion from floating objects and dust clouds, planet gravity fields, interferention from coherent light sources will make it impossible to beam anything farther away from Jupiter, provided you have the energy source required to shoot something at such distance in the first place.

It probably wont be an issue in the future. Even with current tech we already sent a message via neutrinos. They can pass through hundreds of light years of steel undisturbed.

[Deleted]

We would make 1st contact, most of them would die out of diseases and we'd invade and kill all who resist we'd use the rest as slaves to harvest their natural resources for our needs. Come on, you know I'm right here, this is basically what happens even on our planet to weaker nations. Except the diseases which have taken a backseat most times.

[Osmeric]

This beaming you are talking about sounds as something coming out of Star Treck franchise.
No today's laser is able to cross the space to Mars, what's there to speak of something light years away.

Actually, lasers could reach to Mars now. They'd spread quite a bit by the time they get there, but they could be used for communication at bit rates well above what radio allows. Beams to/from the Moon have been tested.

For power beaming, where you don't want the beam to spread, what is needed is a sufficiently large diffraction limited aperture.

To beam over 1 AU (1.5e11 meters) using 0.3 micron light would involve an aperture several hundred meters across. There's no space telescope anywhere near that size now, but some terrestrial ones are starting to get close (30m, I think).

Near interstellar distances are about a million times that, so the apertures would be several hundred kilometers across. I view the challenge of building such a large emitter as less than the challenge of interstellar travel (indeed, it's probably needed for such travel, to beam energy to vehicles.) And to a society that has tapped out their local solar energy and is going to exploit other stars, building such emitters is probably trivial.

[I Push Buttons]

How easy will the technology used to traverse those distances be to produce? How widespread will it be?

If only governments go out that far and only government scientist would have access to the planet, then I would assume we would observe for a long while at first. And if it were public knowledge, I assume the ethical debates on our invasion of that ecosystem would be intense, not to mention the effect it would have on religion, morality, etc...

But its another thing all together if the technology is widespread and easily available and anyone can go there... Short of governments and the military reverse blockading the planet and destroying our own vessels that try to land there, we couldn't prevent people from interfering with the planet.