I have a theory on why we haven't met other civilisations. If you look back to our own evolution of when that first fish walk on land. He didnt turn around and gather his friends to join him on his journey. I believe all species are evolutionary dead ends. Its only a small few that will actually get to evolve and make it into space. Thats why we havnt met other civilisations. The galaxy is littered with worlds that are grave yards and if ther is any intelligent life in space it would only be a single entity or a small group. We will only ever meet travellers passing by. That is all and not some grandiose first contact scenario. Im sorry i think as a civilisation we wont make it into space. It will be some genius who figures something out and ends up leaving by himself cause humanity is still to far behind.

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Or, maybe, we have encountered aliens. It's just that they are so good at disguising themselves we just see them as more of us. We don't have anything of value to offer them so they came, looked around and left with a notation in their logs to come back in a thousand years or so to see if we are still here.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Unless we find a ready-made planet in Alpha Centauri--we will most likely be limited to a base on the Moon and Mars. Even this will be daunting due to cosmic rays and other obvious issues.
I have opined that truly Earth-like planets are few and far between --very rare indeed. It would be nice to be proven wrong. perhaps we could communicate or send a colonization ship--all very doubtful in my estimation.