In the 24th Century with FTL capabilities that have existed since the 22nd Century...

in the 24th Century with FTL capabilities that have existed since the 22nd Century, how big should Humanity's presence in the galaxy be? Would they still be a tiny little space faring race that only spans a tiny corner of the Milky Way? Or would they make up a vast portion of the galaxy? What is more realistic?

That kind of depends on a lot of things you're not saying, such as what "FTL capability" means in practice. Even at 10 times light speed, that's only around 2000 light years at best.

Sorry, I assume that most people accept that FTL means the ability to warp between Solar systems in under a month

It doesn't seem like you grasp how large our galaxy actually is.

Depends how fast the FTL is.

That puts you in the region of 10-100c, in which case the answer is still tiny corner.

It's a very hard thing to grasp, you aren't wrong. This is why I ask

That's a)still awfully vague b)doesn't answer any of the other questions, such as how common habitable planets are, how viable terraforming is, how expensive FTL is and so on and so on

not OP, but I have a vested interest in this topic
1) "habitable planets" are as common as they are IRL, and don't include the presence of technology great enough to allow inhabitance of "uninhabitable planets"
2) assume NASA has developed the technology to allow terraforming, but it takes min. 20 years to terraform.
3) FTL is expensive enough to prohibit lone countries from exploring on their own to gain an upper hand on any other country; however in 24C earth there are still pseudo-countries. Most of the FTL in existence is owned by conglomerations of companies and coalitions of countries.

>3) FTL is expensive enough to prohibit lone countries from exploring on their own to gain an upper hand on any other country; however in 24C earth there are still pseudo-countries. Most of the FTL in existence is owned by conglomerations of companies and coalitions of countries.
So it's expensive enough to make exploration let alone colonization virtually impossible. There might be one or two colonies as a proof of concept, but even those won't be very large.

alright, then assume there are four political superpowers that have all individually developed the ability to travel FTL, along with another 6 mega-corporations that are using it mainly as a supply system to gather resources to make new things. Which superpowers develop it and what resources are being harvested are up to you.

Still not too many colonies. It should be noted that gathering raw resources from other solar systems won't ever really be a thing, because you can find everything(or at least almost everything) within your own system.

Shit, just look at us now. We've had the technology for decades, and we still don't even have a colony on the moon - and that's a trip that takes only days, so it's close enough that it could be supplied from Earth without problems. AND there are actually resources on the moon that aren't too common on Earth(such as Helium-3) that could be mined which doesn't apply on the scale of solar systems.

yeah, why DON'T we have a moon colony?

>yeah, why DON'T we have a moon colony?
No profitable reason to do so.

...

can't send lame people to space homie. let them be hungry.

>can't send lame people to space homie
Why not? It's not like they need to walk there.

The problem is they vote.

No one has the money to do it either

>24th Century with FTL capabilities
>that have existed since the 22nd Century
>Human fiction is still this delusional
Lel. We'll be lucky if the human population of the 22nd century can count with fingers.

Not for long.

Vote's going back to landowners only soon.

>implying this line of thinking hasn't been around the last 20+ centuries
>suggesting that you're original in any way
stay mad

With a economy more and more global, it's unlikely that billionaires and influential people will ever want something like that to happen.
In fact, the current system is perfect to keep (((them))) in power.

Dysgenic trends are real, but take centuries to generate serious effects (where serious is 1 standard deviation).

CRISPR based IQ upgrades OTOH take 1 generation to make geniuses. If that's too scifi for you, go with in-vitro embryo selection based on IQ-correlated SNPs, which is proven, existing, early 00s to late 90s tech and you can do the same thing in 3 generations.

FTL isn't the limiting factor here. Reproductive rates and industrial capacity are.

The average realistic STL civilisation living in 1 solar system, with von-neumann/nanotech tier construction and reproduction, can build a civilization bigger than the average thousands-of-worlds space opera empire in a few centuries, if it wants.

Consider compound interest math. IIRC, the pop growth rate for Earth was around 2% in the 1969s and since decreased to about 0.5%.

At a steady 2%, two centuries from now, there would be 200 billion humans to go around. That's 20 fully populated Earth-sized worlds.

How frequent are habitable planets?

They got no reason to into space either.

English aristocrats also stood little to gain for their experiments and curious interests. Yet look at all the lords that appear in science history textbooks.

The reason to go to space is the same as their reasons back then - recognition and idle curiosity. Elites that do not have to worry about day to day expenses are humanity's best hope for leaving this planet.

>enough raw material resources to live like Gods for all eternity, without having to rely on plebes
>getting away from plebes in the first place, leaving them to rot on their mudball
>not being plebes in the first place, meaning they're probably not shitheads and actually value discovery and curiosity for their own sakes

>no reason

None of those directly harmed them.
If voting is based on land ownership, increasing available land devalues their own franchise. Better stay on earth, senpai.

Where did we go so wrong?

We enslaved niggers and brought them over to one of the few places free of their blight.
And when we were done enslaving them, we didn't ship them back.

The dark continent should have been left alone.

>he never watched Elysium

Space is the ultimate border wall.

Idle hyperelites will have the means and motivation to organize space exploration for others to undertake in their name. The existence of enormous concentracted private wealth can cut out all the naysayers who seek to redistribute it for the betterment of the commons, and enforce that will through voting power.

>means and motivation
They don't now. What will change?

>They don't now

>a literally single guy
I mean, I guess in every century you will get someone like that.

a single guy who has already given us reusable rockets, which was the single biggest deterrent to space travel - you can't really come back, and each rocket is a one-time use for the most part.

with the technological advancements making it (relatively) more affordable to go to space, I can totally see the hyperelite getting their names on planets.

They aren't going to be discovering any unless they're astronomers, senpai.

Landowner voting doesn't imply in aristocracy.
Owning land is nothing especial, especially in a urban world.

He’s not the only one and not even the only vocal one trying to put his face and name all over it.

Discovery is one thing, making a claim and taking into possession another entirely. What do you think are the chances of a rich patron going "Yeah, 1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6 b is how my colony shall be known"? They'll just rename it [myname]opolis.

>AND there are actually resources on the moon that aren't too common on Earth(such as Helium-3) that could be mined which doesn't apply on the scale of solar systems.

>Let's start mining a resource to power a machine that's still purely theoretical.

Physics

Wrong.