[ExI] Alpha Centauri

[Adrian Tymes]

On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 1:13 PM, Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The thing that always makes me chuckle in these kind of conversations is the unstated assumption that the whole point of creating a vast infrastructure devoted to dragging a bunch of people out of a deep gravity well and allowing them to survive long-term (effectively indefinitely) in a space habitat is to travel to another deep gravity well and throw all the poor sophonts down the damn thing again.
>
> WHY?!?!?!

I hear that.  If the Earth got destroyed but we had time to cram people
into livable spaceships?  Why send them across interstellar space to
where there *might* be a habitable planet, as opposed to building a
space station in the habitable orbit of the solar system they're already
in?

Sure, there are challenges that would need to be solved to make a
livable space station.  They, and their risks, pale in comparison to what
comes with crossing several light years, when we've yet to send any
human being much beyond the dark side of the Moon - and then
there's the whole "gambling what's left of the human race on finding a
life-friendly planet" deal.  At least with something we build, we can
address the risks.