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From: DP0N@CMU-CS-A.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: why nobody's visited
Message-ID: <3065@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 2-Aug-85 17:10:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3065
Posted: Fri Aug  2 17:10:54 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Aug-85 21:09:27 EDT
Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: Don.Provan@CMU-CS-A

Remember the classic SF short that theorized that detecting which
stars had habitable planets was such a trick that one extremely
advanced civilization never found it and finally just died out
since there was no point wandering over those vast distances just
to find a habitable world.  I believe they actually sent out a few
scouts but gave up when none of them found anything.  The plot
involves a less advanced race that had stumbled on the secret
trying to figure out what happened to this dead race by reviving
individuals from their remains and quizzing them.

This seems so likely (except it probably isn't possibile to detect
which systems are worth visiting, not merely hard) that I don't
find it the least bit surprising that we haven't been visited.