I see. I suppose I'm too used to it to not find that strange, but the quick development of space travel in my time wasn't exactly by choice.
A war between two alien races that had been going on for thousands of years ended up catching Earth in its crossfire. Most of the planet's surface was destroyed, and only a small fraction of the population survived by escaping on a spaceship. The original survivors returned after the war ended, but to lessen the risk of being wiped out by something else, they began sending ships to find other inhabitable planets.
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A war between two alien races that had been going on for thousands of years ended up catching Earth in its crossfire. Most of the planet's surface was destroyed, and only a small fraction of the population survived by escaping on a spaceship. The original survivors returned after the war ended, but to lessen the risk of being wiped out by something else, they began sending ships to find other inhabitable planets.