even if such travel became possible, what could motivate anyone to actually do it at scale? if they're anything like humans, there would probably be a few crazy beings who would do it just to do something extreme, but aside from escaping a dying world, i can't see any reason why such a journey would be attempted at scale. what's the point of having a galaxy spanning civilization when the origin system would be destroyed every time you made a roundtrip?
I've had this conversation before and something interesting is that I think there may be a genetic component here, which can make empathy, in either direction, somewhat difficult. From my perspective, the question is who wouldn't go on such a voyage? Are you not curious what the universe really looks like? What unknown phenomena or other curiosities are out there? To me this is literally the meaning of life. Intellectual curiosity, challenging yourself, adventure. Not to mention that finding a place where your vessel could settle would mean being able to start an entirely new branch of our species created with the wisdom of and knowledge of a species' existence of efforts beforehand. I think all of these urges played a critical role both in our evolution and our global expansion.
Beyond this there are also more material motivations as well. Of course there will be people simply seeking a better life, and a demographic that's yet to be created is those seeking immortality. Relativistic travel enables the possibility of traveling 'into the future'. People throughout time have engaged in all sorts of behavior to try to extend their lives. Relativistic travel is perhaps the most likely to achieve such ends since it would enable access to future technologies. In the future I'd expect to see many of the wealthiest on Earth directing a disproportionate amount of their funds to space technology to this end. This could even be happening in the present, but that'd be beyond the realm of even wild speculation.
> if they're anything like humans, there would probably be a few crazy beings who would do it just to do something extreme, but aside from escaping a dying world, i can't see any reason why such a journey would be attempted at scale.
How about the promise of future prosperity for whatever your group was, having a whole planets resources at your disposal? If we look at human history it's full of mass migrations, the colonization of the new world (original and 16th century) and the migration period (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_Period) come to mind. These weren't just a few thrill seekers but hundreds of thousands/millions of people.
