Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asking the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

Benjamin Franklin once said, he that can have patience can have what he will,

and when it comes to space, it means having a lot of patience, but the reward is an entire galaxy.

So science fiction often shows us faster thanin-light spaceships, taking pioneers to new colony

planets halfway across the galaxy in mere months, and on the show we often discuss how FTR

probably won't be an option, but we can still colonize space, it will just take us longer,

requiring generation ships that

might move at 10 or 20% of light speed, needing a generation or two to get to the nearest

stars, and maybe several to get to a preferred candidate system. However, while known physics

certainly allows such ships, it relies on a lot of optimistic

solutions to problems, not least of which is, if it is really possible to build a ship

that could survive moving through space at truly relativistic speeds.

What we normally do on this channel is to show everyone that even if we don't get the

FTR technology

is ubiquitous in science fiction, we can still colonize our galaxy.

Today, we'll take that a step further and argue that even if we can't travel through space,

while moving at a mere 10% of light speed, we can still colonize the galaxy via slowboat ships, what we

will call colonizing, and we will also discuss how that might vary in approach.

First, we need to talk about why we might not be able to go faster than 1% of light speed,

...