We don’t really know how many 1,500 is, because we’re missing a lot of the variables we need to have even an order-of-magnitude estimate of how common intelligent life is. It could be practically inevitable on planets with liquid water; it could be one in a million even given “animal” life. Qualified experts disagree.
And 50 light years is a long distance to travel even at a tremendous speed like 0.01c, but it isn’t that long to send postcards. If we’d sent out a bunch of reasonably good questions in 1912, we would still be interested in the answers today. (More interesting, I think, is what they would ask us.)
In retrospect, I’m assuming we’re taking a finding-intelligent-life perspective here. But if you’re thinking in terms of human expansion – terraforming and so on – then I agree.
And 50 light years is a long distance to travel even at a tremendous speed like 0.01c, but it isn’t that long to send postcards. If we’d sent out a bunch of reasonably good questions in 1912, we would still be interested in the answers today. (More interesting, I think, is what they would ask us.)
In retrospect, I’m assuming we’re taking a finding-intelligent-life perspective here. But if you’re thinking in terms of human expansion – terraforming and so on – then I agree.