I don't know what I'd look for in a planet, were I in the market for one. I probably wouldn't want an uninhabited one, because I don't think I'd be much of a hunter or gatherer. I wouldn't want to fend for myself out there. What's the point of crossing a galaxy if I have to capture and kill my dinner once I get to the other side? I wouldn't want to end up on a planet that wasn't as developed as the one I left either. Again, why cross a galaxy to end up someplace where people die from the common cold or where they amputate your foot because of an ingrown toenail? Leaving the planet feels like a futuristic thing, so I want to feel like I'm in the future when I do it. Let there be a flying car or a jet pack or maybe some kind of robot butler. I've seen where this world has come from, or I could see it if I wanted to read a history book, so I don't need to see the same thing on some other world. Given the choice of living in the past or in the future, I'd choose the future every time. I don't know what could be out there. No one does. We know there are planets and we know people, or something, live on them, and we know in most cases those people or something move back and forth between planets on a regular basis. Maybe they're fighting a war out there. Maybe they're colonizing. Maybe they're running an enormous interplanetary flea market. There's no way to tell from here. It's like watching an anthill on the moon with a pair of toy binoculars. You know it's all there but you can't see the details. I just want to see the details. I might not even want to stay on one of these planets we know about, even if they welcomed me with a handshake and a nice dinner. It might be better to keep pushing on. To find something no one's seen before. If I turn up in the middle of a bunch of colonies, or a trading group, or a war, I'd be just another visitor. A drop-in. Sure, that could be fun. It could be a really good life, depending on where I dropped in. But the thing is, we already know about these places, even if we don't know very much. So to go to them wouldn't be a whole lot different than going to some other continent on this planet. A nice trip, maybe, but nothing amazing. And don't think I'm trying to back out of a trip off this rock if it was possible. Don't think I'm making excuses or coming up with wild scenarios because I secretly don't want to leave. Believe me, I've got nothing keeping me here, no sir. No ties that bind for me, my friend. I'd leave today if I could, but maybe I should be a little bit picky about where I'm going. Seems sensible, doesn't it? Once I leave this planet, on the one hand I'd have two thousand nine hundred and ninety nine known destinations, and on the other, an infinite number of unknown ones. Those are choices not taken lightly. You might say that in the infinite universe, the odds against me finding some unknown habitable planet are nearly infinite themselves, and you'd probably be right. But I've thought about this a little bit, and I've been thinking that maybe the odds against me finding such a place are infinite, but then wouldn't the odds against me not finding an unknown habitable planet also be infinite? And if the odds for and against something are both infinite, doesn't that mean they're equally likely to happen? So if the whole universe is as likely to treat me well as it is to treat me badly, isn't it worth going out there and finding out which one it's going to be? It's practically a fifty-fifty chance. Wouldn't it be stupid not to go?