Interstellar Flight: Perspectives and Patience

Won't dreams stay dreams?

There's literally nothing there, why go all that way? The distances are so incredibly vast. It seems like we ought to be content with staying put.

There was a time when there was nothing (European) in the entire New World. There was a time when there was nothing known (to the US) about what was in most of the Louisiana Purchase. There was a time when there was nothing (European) in, say, Ohio. And then Nebraska. And so on.

There was literally nothing there? Why go all that way? To see what was there. And then to make something there.

[Edit, because I'm rate limited: No, interstellar space is something to cross, to get to stellar space. You think the New World was rich? How about a whole solar system of untapped resources?

That's why people will try to go.]

They didn't believe there was literally nothing there. They went all that way to find unclaimed riches.

The hypothetical riches were quite obvious: same stuff we have over here, but not owned by someone yet.

What are they hypothetical riches of outer space?

This is a question we should think about clearly and logically without resorting to stuff like "oh tally-ho the adventure!" type nonsense.

There is many times more water in gas giant moons than on Earth. If we develop the technology needed to make a multi-generation ship we also have the technology to make deep space habitats - enough for trillions or quadrillions of people.

Just imagine the economic output of a civilisation a million times the size of ours.

It’s a lot easier to imagine the economic output of simply raising all of the current Homo sapiens out of poverty and into economic productivity, no?

Then we can use all of that new productivity to start working toward the next rung?

Our economy is not currently throughput limited on water or space so I don’t find this compelling.

That's a false dilemma. You can do both things at the same time. In fact, doing one will most likely also cause the other.

I didn't say we had to choose one or the other, I'm suggesting actually the opposite: the clearly superior way to do it is to first do one (ensure we are maximally leveraging all IQ points born to humans on earth) then do the other (now armed with billions more brains that freed from the daily task of avoiding premature death).

If you have an argument for why the reverse ordering, or in parallel, would be better, that's what I'm asking for: what's the argument?

Flesh it out beyond just "imagine if we succeed with no substantial opportunity loss!"