/sci/ - Science & Math

The process of humanity expanding across Earth or expanding across our solar system will forever be totally distinct from out expansion beyond that.
Since the dawn of mankind, the Earth has become 'small'. We can communicate in seconds and transfer people and objects in hours. We have networked our world. Soon when we expand into the solar system, it may take hours to communicate between groups of people (because of the light speed limit) and months to transfer physical objects or goods. We will be able to do it but the disconnect will be decidedly greater. Each 'colony' must be prepared to stand on its own.

However this is small time compared to galactic expansion. Just speaking to each other will take many years. Transporting goods will take decades or centuries. The speed of light is a bitch, and the universe will stay insurmountably large, forever. Any pockets of people we manage to send to habitable systems will practically be forever lost as far as we are concerned. We would only be able to receive communication updates, albeit ten or fifty years too late.

Sorry OP. Just the way it is. Here, have a space Oekaki.