Now imagine that during such a mission a similar earth-like planet (with the same resources as ours) was found populated with humans who had reached a level of technology similar to our industrial revolution. As mission commander you would want to make contact with these people and, on making contact, there are a number of choices to make:
1. Be passive, study them, send your findings back to mission control
2. Be proactive, reveal your technological advantage to them to help them advance theirs
3. Be aggressive, use your technological advantage to bring them to their knees!
But before you decide you find out something... these people, whilst biologically the same as us, have one major advantage - they learn quickly, damned quickly. So much so that they've reached their industrial revolution in a fraction of the time it took us to get to ours and that, once they discover computers they will advance at a rate beyond anything like Moore's Law.
With this in mind your choices have some caveats:
- In being passive, you plan to study them in order to find out why they learn quickly with the intention of sending your findings back to mission control. However it takes time for you to do this, increasing the probability that our technological advantage could fall into their hands.
- In being proactive and sharing our technology with them you endanger us due to them advancing quickly to a level beyond ours so that they could reach earth and threaten us
- In being aggressive, in your attempts to conquer them, they fight back and your technological advantage fall into their hands thereby putting earth in danger of a revenge attack
So, which decision will you make?
And no, the mission hasn't got nukes on board.
And, again, no, the Prime Directive does not apply this isn't Star Trek.
And, yes, the odds of finding another planet full of humans is infinitesimally remote... fucking humour me!
