... you send them either in suspended animation or as sperm and eggs,
to be fertilized and raised by AI on arrival.

As with missions to the worlds in this solar system, if you want to mainly
explore, send machines. If you want to colonize, send people.

Same goes for space missions to the stars. Machines will do a much
better job and require far fewer resources than will a ship full of even
a few humans.

But if we are set on colonizing other star systems some day, and our
children aren't biologically and technologically altered beyond recognition
by their ancestors (us), then we need to find another planet that will
be compatible with our biology and the animals and plants we will likely
take with us.

What are the odds that we will find an alien planet that we can settle
down on with no problems for us? And since there will have to be some
kind of ecosystem on that planet already for conditions to keep us alive
and happy, what happens to those creatures? Do we say too bad for
them because our children's children will be the dominant life forms now?
Is this how it works everywhere?

If we can't find an alien Earth anywhere near us, will we send out
missions to terraform new worlds? Or is this just so much old school
as our children may be designed to live in all kinds of environments.

The more I think about it, the only way we current style humans will
expand into the galaxy in person is by finding a planet that is already
enough like Earth and not care about who might already be living there
or taking a "dead" world and terraforming it first.

Even if there are no "intelligent" beings on said world (and there's a
sticky wicket of an issue right off the bat), we will end up either
altering or wiping out the native species in order to make a new home
for our children. I am finding this to be a bigger issue than how to get
them there in one piece (multigenerational starship - keep everyone
informed about their ancestory and the mission plan, keep in touch with
humanity back home, and make sure there are WINDOWS all over the
ship, not just the command center, so we don't end up with Heinlein's
Orphans of the Sky).

So is this how life and nature works at all scales? One species invades
another and wins or loses new territory in the process. Have we just
been lucky, or are there not enough other intelligences to worry about?

Or are AIs the real intelligences of the galaxy and beyond and they
don't need no stinkin' Earth-type worlds to live on - except as material
to build their Dyson Shell "bodies" some day.

I think it is safe to say we need to build those really big telescopes they
keep talking about, put them in space, and start getting a much better
picture about who and what is out there before we just go boldly blazing
into the Milky Way.

But to be realistic, you know there will be people who will do just that
once the proper space infrastructure is available to more than just the
governments and the superrich. Religious fundamentalists, criminals, and
social misfits may be our first "ambassadors" to the stars. The reaction
should be interesting to say the least, especially if other species are
more like us than not.