A very good story that contains a contradiction. The alien telling the story cries out against exploring space and how dangerous it is. So what's he doing off his home world?
@robertmore703 The point is, who mapped that area? If humans were the first and only explorer species, we would be famous for it, and the alien wouldn't need to even ask. But by the way the conversation went, we weren't. That means there are alien explorers as well. One could argue that with technology they could scan the space, find and establish communication with other species before venturing into the void, but that still doesn't remove the dangers of the unknown. Someone had to do it, and the alien talks like we were the only one brave enough or stupid enough to take that step. In my opinion the author should've established first the aliens perspective on space exploration, like it's something incredible dangerous that they only do in the direst of circumstances, and nobody really wants to do. Or that they only use autonomous scout ships. Then, the road is paved to talk about the human explorer spirit.
He said why would anyone want to leave our nice resource rich world? Perhaps his world is not resource rich. I think he was more upset at the concept of being an "explorer" rather than the idea of space in general. Explorers go to new places, place themselves at risk essentially for fun, not out of necessity. Quite different to a surveyor say, they do what they do as part of a risk benifit trade-off and generally at greatly reduced risk. Both go to new places, for different reasons. The difference between "exploring" how fast you can go in a land speed record car, or being a truck driver. The alien cries out why would you try and drive that fast? Just take a plane or something it's much safer! The human replies because there's a flat bit of ground there and I was wondering how fast I could go.
It is a bit weird to have someone who is traveling space him/herself, to question why others would do it. Sure, maybe all current travel is safe and known. But their own species must have ventured out themselves. (or at the very least, some species must have, and they were willing to join)
I think it's about the difference between just using the road between two points, which was built by others long ago, and leaving that road just to explore the surrounding area. Most people never leave the road, just follow the known and safe path, few are curious and leave it.
Their people explored and tamed a chunk of the galaxy long ago and now stay with the known safe areas. Something has been lost and they don't even remember what it feels like.
There's a big difference between 'exploring' the jungle for the fun of it and doing a land survey to find resources then building roads to get to the places you've found safely. His species comes from a resource poor world so they had to go to space, but they did it slowly, carefully, safely. We sent Apollo 11 up with a titanium crowbar in case the door to the lander got stuck and we did it to try to look cool basically. We didn't *need* to go, we wanted to.
If no one dared to eat the red Berry. We wouldn't have raspberry pie. If no one dares to try, then no 1 will dare to try. If no one is the first to eat that red Berry, no 1 else will.
Agro once agin you picked a great story for us! Thank you! And thank you goes to the writer for is wonderfull store! I hope to hear and read more of your work! WITH ENERGY!!
This story might work in a different setting. If the *humans* traveled through space and met a fearful species, this conversation might make sense. *We* find *them* and they turn out to be a species afraid to leave their home planet or home system, sure. But, for the aliens to have traveled to Earth and yet not understand why anyone else would want to leave their house planet? That’s just odd.
Here is a like and comment for the story, for entertaining me, to help your channel grow, to appease the great and powerful RU-vid algorithm demon, and get you the recognition you deserve.
If people are still pondering the goals of Elon Musk in reaching Mars, then they need to just read this story to understand. The flame of Humanity must never extinguish.
