Why do you say that? Do you know how FTL drive works?

Perhaps it won't.

While that's cute... aliens smart enough to fly here wouldn't likely be that dumb...

And even if they were, they would learn from the example...

Even if we somehow survived the first assault, we wouldn't survive the second or third.

Remember, unlike wars on Earth, we can't march on their lands, because they are in space.

The answer is simple. Despite all our knowledge and technology, the fact is, most humans still see us as the center of the universe created by a "god" and that we are his children created in his image.

Such a viewpoint doesn't allow for such outside the box thinking.

A lot of people in this thread are having this problem.

Frankly, the whole thing might not happen for exactly that reason. 500 years from now, we might not even keep our human bodies, once we figure out how to upload ourselves into computers.

Such an idea is horrifying to my mother and wife, both of whom think that sounds terrible. But that doesn't mean it won't happen. Doesn't mean it will either of course.

You say that with a degree of certainty that I don't believe is due.

What makes you think it is so limited? Perhaps they have matter replicators on-board that only require power and they can refuel at any star.

The ship itself becomes a self-sustaining factory that runs forever, making anything you need, including spare parts for the ship.

The external power source is any nearby star for fuel. With enough fuel, there is no supply chain, just the ship.

You think people in 1903 would understand how the Rocketdyne F-1 engines worked?

There is a difference between understanding that "long stick has fire on the bottom and goes up" and understanding how to make the turbopumps work without blowing up.

I get that FTL drive uses something to go faster than light, it would not shock me at all to see one in action. I have no idea how the technology works however.

To you and me? No, probably not...

How about to the rest of the 7 billion people on this planet, many of whom still believe in religion?

That mistake has been made before. More than once.

I would submit that we have just climbed a 100ft hill and you're quite proud of yourself. I see Mt. Everest in the distance and know we have much further to go.

We're both right, from our own points of view. I simply believe that you're going to be disappointed when you find that we have so much further to go.

This totally made me laugh out loud, thanks for the mental image, which I'll now steal! :)

You can be as snarky as you like and come up with as many silly examples as you like.

It doesn't change the basic point.

If FTL travel is possible (which we don't know if it is or isn't), then sooner or later, someone is bound to discover it.

If we assume it is possible, then the odds of that happening is very high given the number of stars, number of galaxies, and time scales involved.

However, while the odds of it being discovered is very high, the odds of it being discovered near us is very low and the odds of it being discovered during a time in which humans have been around is even lower.

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Humans clearly still think they are the center of things, we are not. Humans have a history going back ten to twenty thousand years. That is a very short period of time to the Universe. We only live about 100 years, give or take, that is even shorter.

And if we can't, then no one can, anywhere?

That is a very human centered view, and a flawed one. You are assuming that we have to discover FTL drive before someone else can do so and use it it come here.

If it is possible (which we don't know), then our discovery of it doesn't matter, only someone else's.

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In any case, let me turn it around. Lets say that we discovered it tomorrow. We then use it to go to our nearest star. Great, how cool is that!

How long would it take before we go to ALL of them? Or even the few million likely to have Earth type planets, just in our galaxy?

We could spend a million years flying around in starships before finding another "Earth" with people on it, just in our own galaxy.

That they are not here neither proves nor disproves anything.

While that sounds like a reasonable statement, you and I simply don't know if physics does or does not allow for it.

We don't know all there is to know about such things. We can't even explain what makes gravity happen. We know it is real, the evidence is obvious, but what causes it, can you affect it, can you create or destroy it?

Much to learn, we have...

That assumes that it uses propulsion the way we would, which is to use the Newtonian "equal and opposite reaction" thing.

What makes you think that is how it moves? Perhaps it has a gravity drive that allows it to move via artificial gravity. It simply places a gravity well in front of the ship and the ship "falls into it", then it places another one in front of that, and so on.

There would not be any emissions that we could detect from such a drive.

Humans are pretty good at adapting the technology of other humans.

We are already starting to get serious about smart guns. You think aliens traveling from another solar system wouldn't have weapons that are smart enough to not be used by anyone else?

They would likely have "smart" guns in the literal sense, in that AI in the guns would be smart enough to know who was holding the gun. Self-destructing would be an easy way to make it not worth picking up the alien guns.

As for the supply train, a starship traveling to other solar systems needs to be self contained, it is its own supply train. It makes internally everything it needs.

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Coming back to the idea of the US military going back in time, of course I'm assuming that the supply chain goes with them, a tank is useless without fuel of course.

While it is true that the Napoleon era tech wasn't all bows and arrows, they didn't have anything that flew (that was useful, they had balloons). The first thing to do would be to take out HIS supply using bombers, helicopters, and drones.