Where do you think it could be?
How would we get there?
How long do you think it should take to get there?
What should we do when we get there?
If there is life already there, what should we do?
Should we wait to be contacted by another race before we go?
I could go on and on but i will let you add in what you want.
Let's make this a community effort and see what we can brainstorm.
Make no mistake we have a long and arduous journey to make if we're ever to make a successfull leap from Earth to say Mars or Venus or any of the proposed moons.
But..and there is always a but..many times when we as a race reach a certain threshold, we manage to break barriers thought of as impossible just a year before. Like aviation for axample.
It was the widely acceptable belief by most scientists that flight would be impossible because they saw no way of making man lighter than air. How could you possibly build an aircraft to carry a man that would be lighter than air they thought. Of course now we all know the principles of flight and air pressures and lighter than air gasses for blimps and such but then it was a literally absurd notion.
I imagine that someday in the near future we will again discover, maybe accidentally, a means to transport ourselves from A to B with light years in between with relative ease. We may just discover that Einstein with all his intellectual might, was wrong in regards to a few theories.
Faster-than-light travel may not mean that we leave and travel for a month but folks back on Earth age by a thousand years (gross exaggeration).
If that were the case and interstellar travel were possible in a manageable timescale we could be looking at mere decades for colonization of other planets or moons. Just by one breakthrough!
Generally though one great breakthrough like that is accompanied by many which could easily lead to feasible means by which man might expand and populate the stars.
When we get there we should take time to assess the planet, the environment and our impact there. Then we could move on to exploration, mineral exploration, colonization protocols and so on.
If there is life already there what would we do? Maybe the better question is what should we do? Thats indeed a moral problem that we need to sort out here.
The way we are, we would probably in the case of harmless life forms, poke, praud and humiliate the poor sob's in the name of science. In the form of advanced life, we'd likely study them from afar then if we deemed them conquerable and the circumstances like wealth were involved, we would probably wage war and take what we wanted.
What we should do is probably study as much as possible with as little impact as possible in any case. If only lower life forms were present then maybe we do what we want. If advanced beings are present maybe we gather intelligence and evaluate from there. If they are very advanced, they will likely detect us far before we land anyway. If they are hostile, the exploration team will likely never know it, lol. If they are friendly, every attepmt to make contact and exchange info should be considered very carefully and taken on a case by case basis.
This poses an extrordinary question confronted by Gene Rodenberry many years ago. Do you intrude and "mess" with civilizations or leave them alone?
I don't think we should wait to be contacted by another "alien" race before we go. That could be extremely dangerous! IMO we should excell to our limits as fast as possible. I think it was Mr. Hawking that said that contact by an advanced alien race would in all liklihood be extraordinarily bad for humankind. Most likely any race that was advanced enough to travel across light years would be able to take anything they wanted and would probably wipe out humanity for something maybe as insignificant to us as silicate or sulfer. I think we should be eager to advance to the point that we could, if need be, put up a good fight at least. this may mean that we are able to rely upon colonies on other planets to accomplish our very survival as a species.