Cryptids

[Mister Agenda]

Once upon a time I calculated that with a travel capability of 10% of lightspeed, it would take us about 2 million years to colonize the galaxy end-to-end. We don't have to break the laws of physics to occupy the galaxy, but it does presume the will to do so.

How did you calculate that?

It was such a long time ago that I don't remember, but I'm sure it wasn't anything fancy. The Milky Way is maybe 120,000 ly in diameter, so it would take about 1.2 million years to cross it if that was your goal and your average speed was c x 0.1. I presume I added 800,000 years on the presumption that we would do it organically with the goal of getting to the next 'good' star system after spending decades to a century or two colonizing the previous one; but also that we wouldn't dawdle for centuries once we had enough industrial base to finance the next trip. Of course, the farther we get from home, the bigger our 'frontier' is (for the first half, at least) and the more star systems under simultaneous colonization.