Part 3/4:

Even if we could overcome the speed of light barrier, time dilation effects would create a profound disconnect between the travelers and their home planet. For a spacecraft traveling at 95% of the speed of light, the crew would experience the journey as taking just over 3 years, while 10 years would have passed on Earth. At higher speeds, this time discrepancy becomes even more extreme, with the crew experiencing the passage of time much more slowly than those they left behind.

The Fermi Paradox and the Limits of Interstellar Travel

The absence of evidence for technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, as posed by the Fermi Paradox, suggests that the physical limitations of interstellar travel may be insurmountable. If such civilizations existed, they would have had eons to develop the capability to traverse the galaxy, yet their absence implies that the challenges of interstellar travel may be too great to overcome.

The Promise of Robotic Explora

[...]