The worlds between, the consequences of instantaneous FTL

For some time I've been working on a universe with non-instantaneous Faster-Than-Light travel, but I've decided to open a new universe with instantaneous travel. So I'm working on the differences that the two modes of transport necessarily enforce on the societies that use them.

The first question that occurs to me is this: If ever planet in the galaxy is effectively equidistant from Earth is there any point in colonising anything that's less than almost perfect?

In the four years it was working Kepler found that of the 200,000 stars it surveyed, that's roughly one one-millionth of all the stars in the galaxy, 50 had an Earthlike world in their Goldilocks zone. With instantaneous interstellar travel that puts 50 million Earths within easy reach, would we colonise star systems without easily habitable worlds or would those systems be left empty until we had packed the good worlds with people. Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet does a good treatment of what might happen to worlds colonised when slow FTL was the only option after the introduction of a faster travel option but I'm wondering about the impact on colonisation choices in a setting where there is no slow option.

Good answers should focus on reasons why there might be a push to colonise systems without Earthlike worlds at the same rate as systems with them. Assume that travel to/from every star system in the Galaxy to any other has the same cost in time, energy, materiel.

posted over 6 years ago

Ash‭

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