Where are the ETs? And how to colonise another planet, the realistic way

There was a discussion on the Swedish radio the other day about why we have not seen any aliens since the Universe is so big with so many start and planets, and for all we know, if the right conditions exists, life do pop up.

To me the answers are mostly quite far fetched, and there is a much simpler one: To travel with the fastest vehicle the human race has created: the Helios-2 probe, travelling at 250 000 km/h relative to the sun, it would take a little more than 18 500 years to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to the Sun. Conclusion: It is tricky to travel in space. Now lets' assume there is a moderate density of life in the Universe, say life in every 10th star system. Then it is not surprising that no one has come here; it is simply to much work to get here. There is for sure other intelligent life out there, and maybe they have worked out a way to move to other stars, but everything we know points at that this will be a difficult process, more aimed at preserving the human spices and exploring than a realistic replacement for Earth and the population living here.

If you were to send a crew to a new star system, with the purpose of using the planet(s) available there for expansion, and you can chose between a system which is already inhabited by a primitive race (us) or an empty one where you will not have to bother anyone else. Which one would you chose?

It should further be noticed, that no sensible communication will be possible once the new colony has been established: Signal propagation will take years and have very limited capacity. Thus, establishing a new colony will essentially be a permanent separation.

My take: to colonise a new exo-planet the steps needs to be.
1. Send a team of micro/nano-machines that can build larger machines that can build larger machines ... that can build large machines.
2. Terra-form or at least make part of the planet habitable.
3. Send human and other DNA (or the DNA information in some more robust form.
4. Grow life using the DNA and the machines on the foreign world.

Thus, one can send many space ships, cause they’re small and not so energy consuming. And maybe some will survive the trip. The immense time to travel will be less of a problem for the travellers since they will not be conscious.

När ska mobilnät ses som infrastruktur

Förr var televerket statligt och nu har man privatiserat det. Med den revolutions som internet och mobilitet har inneburit, borde det inte vara dax att fundera på en statlig nätverksleverantör igen. Där man, likt vägar, har en skattefinansierad leverantör av mobilt och trådbundet internet på samma sätt som annan vital infrastruktur?