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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dark2112" data-source="post: 6117764" data-attributes="member: 3503">I blame hollywood and my lack of interest in digging further to find real evidence for my own ignorance, and yes it is embarrassing. Not wanting to dwell on the expense of these missions, if the common objection to any of the various scenarios is the primary difficulty, and we've established that the cost can be paid if there is a reason to do so, all we have to provide is evidence that there would be a significant portion of people in positions to pay those costs in order to actually go ahead with the missions that have been proposed.I personally think there would be a lot more interest in establishing trade than war, but that depends a lot on our assumptions. A trade relationship assumes that whatever life we find over there is at least compatible enough that we can communicate with them, because without communication, there can be no trade. An alien race that we can't establish any sort of common ground with, such as perhaps a telepathic hive mind race that doesn't view us as intelligent, would lead to war. Once it's established that there's a race that will eventually expand outside of it's own boundaries and take our planet from us, we'd definitely have the provocation to spend the money for war purposes. The other side of the coin, is that we would probably have a privately funded expedition in place to send an explorer on a cultural and/or trade mission, and the likely result of that would be some sort of interplanetary trade. I find it hard to believe that an entire planet would have absolutely nothing to interest us enough to justify the return trip cost, especially since we'd almost certainly make the initial trip.So really, unless my assumption that cost is the primary difficulty is wrong, this discussion essentially boils down to whether or not this alien culture is similar to ours, or completely unable to be understood. If similar, some sort of trade is the likely end result, due to the evidence of humanity's various explorations across the globe and the expensive trade empires it's already created. If not, some sort of containment action/war is the likely result, and the only real question is if we have the means to enforce that with today's technology.If we're assuming eventual hostilities, and assuming that radiation has a similar effect on their environment as it does on ours, how feasible would it be to transport largeish amounts of radioactive materials (radioactive waste as the primary source, moving on from there if needed) near their planet, if the goal were simply to seed the atmosphere with radioactive materials? How much radioactive materials would we need to seed an earth type planet with enough radiation to begin killing off or sterilizing the larger lifeforms?I do like the previously mentioned idea of an ion drive ship sending asteroids into mars, for the purposes of war, but aiming interstellar objects is pretty tricky, and I'd see that as the bigger challenge to that idea than anything else. They would eventually see it coming, and I'm sure we could attempt to delay any efforts to halt it with modified conventional weaponry platforms (projectile weaponry fired upon any martian ships that come near the asteroid, for example), but with the timescale of such an attack (years, likely), the bad luck of an early detection or poor aim could very well send these asteroids closer to our orbit, and would make it easier for them to use our own failed projectiles in a similar attack against us.</blockquote>

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