"Joe Strout" <joe@strout.net> wrote in message
news:joe-3EFEE0.16225027052004@comcast.dca.giganews.com...

In article <REM-2004may27-001@Yahoo.Com>, RobertMaas@YahooGroups.Com
wrote:

this assumes that 'move to another star' is a potential niche

Once Dyson-sphere technology exists, putting a colony around another
star is definitely a potential niche. The only problem is getting
there. We have some ideas for doing that, but we aren't sure they'd
really work.

Nonsense -- "getting there" isn't an event, it's a gradual process.
Take us for example.  After we've used the materials in the asteroid
belt, and dismantled the moons of the giant planets, the obvious next
targets are the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud.  Our Oort cloud extends
about three light years out from the Sun.  If Alpha Centauri has a
similar Oort cloud, then its cloud overlaps with ours.  So by colonizing
the Oort cloud, you're already starting to colonize the next star.  Just
keep spreading, one convenient chunk of raw material at a time, and in a
few hundred million years, you've colonized the galaxy.  No new kinds of
travel are required.

I've always liked this idea.  I particularly like the
answer it implies to Fermi's question: "Where are they?"
They are here in our solar system, out past Pluto, but they
don't like the heat anymore, so they stay out of the kitchen!

One problem with this idea though.  What to use
for energy?  Fissionables probably can't be found,
and I suspect that fusion fuels may be exhausted
more quickly than you can hop to the next comet out.