How should humans deal with space travel and alien contact if the time ever comes?

[Malone II]

Personally I think, If there is more advanced life out there. They would have found us by now.
I think we're going to be the first ones up in the black.
Like 40k? No.
Fire photon torpedoes? No, fire the 500 megaton bomb.

We'll probably be superior to them as we can adapt and are currently going through a technological renaissance right now.
We need a world government first, then we'll go to mars.

 

[Chamale]

no direct contact with alien species, silently observing the species development.

This seems to be less than ideal, and outright terrible in certain circumstances. A plan to make no direct contact with aliens would mean letting many of them suffer from curable diseases and preventable starvation. Hopefully humanity will sort out its problems in 200 years, and I hope we'll be able to help any aliens in need of help that we meet. Of course, we would need to first reach the point where we can communicate well enough with them to actually understand problems.

 

[Nouw]

Imagine that... I dibs being the Emperor!

Dibs doesn't cut it. First a world war three has to break out, and then the "wars of unification" has to start as well, where the emperor almost single handedly unite the entire population of earth under a single banner before instigating the great crusade.

So you'd have to be a pretty powerful psyker to accomplish that before you can be an Emperor.

Everyone starts somewhere! *Head explodes

 

[Les Awesome]

How should humans deal with space travel and alien contact if the time ever comes?
the answer. with GUNS

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

Everyone starts somewhere! *Head explodes

...

*picks up microphone connected to the P.A*

"Clean up in aisle three please. Some asshole tried to be The Emperor again"

 

[General Recluse]

face it, when we find alien life we're going to backstab them and steal all their technology and weapons.

 

[Blandman]

A good rule of thumb: If they're less advanced, leave it to us (the British). If there's one thing we do better than anyone else, it's exploit natives. Huzzah!

 

[2fish]

If the aliens watch out tv won't they think we are really advanced (or really stupid)? I mean we have broadcast enough tv shows into space about us being in space. Startrek, firefly, other startrek, starwars, ect?

We must destroy these humans before they develop their ships further and can put a death star in our system.

 

[The Procrastinated End]

You could:
A. Stop wasting time and money and do something productive
B. Go into space and stop trying to colonize the moon like retards
C. When you meet an alien race that has technology that will utterly destroy you, bow down and beg for mercy.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

no direct contact with alien species, silently observing the species development.

This seems to be less than ideal, and outright terrible in certain circumstances. A plan to make no direct contact with aliens would mean letting many of them suffer from curable diseases and preventable starvation. Hopefully humanity will sort out its problems in 200 years, and I hope we'll be able to help any aliens in need of help that we meet. Of course, we would need to first reach the point where we can communicate well enough with them to actually understand problems.

If they are some kind of sub-space travel species, I don't think we should have any direct contact period, since if we do, they won't make their own technologies, make their own cures, fix their own problems. What would be most destructive in the long run if we give them a helping hand, and they lose all ambition to innovate themselves, the drive to improve. We don't interact with them, no matter how hard we can try, going and yelling "GET IN LINE" will not fix the under lying problems of their society, and it would boom into bigger issues over time.

 

[Kuranesno7]

If humanity starts exploring the universe, I vote for keeping a multi-faceted musician, since I figure any sentient life similar to ours with a culture should be able to respond to either language or music in some manner.
On another note, what if we meet a being that is too alien for us to understand? This russian dude wrote a book about a planet sized organism that played mind-games with scientists sent to study it for its own observations.
Or what if we meet an amoral but momentarily harmless Lovecrftian Elder God?
Would we be able to handle, let alone percieve, an eyeful of space Cthuhlu.
As a manner of meeting aliens, treat it like how Douglas Adams or Hunter S. Thompson would handle the situation, which would be to fire a warning shot or two over them, appologize, ask in some manner for directions to a nearby habitable planet, offer drugs, booze, or a musical piece as an exchange, and simply fly away, leaving both to their own devices. Don't give unless asked for, Don't take unless offered would be the proper way I imagine.

 

[Nouw]

Everyone starts somewhere! *Head explodes

...

*picks up microphone connected to the P.A*

"Clean up in aisle three please. Some asshole tried to be The Emperor again"

Always good to see humour. I lol'd.

 

[Free Thinker]

I nominate myself as ambassador. I will negotiate a peace term and a sharing of customs and technology, and for me; a few of their women...