Why Haven't We Been Visited By Aliens From Outer Space?

Try Sitting Still For A Loooooooooong Time

I watched a BBC video explaining how, theoretically (according to Albert Einstein) travel that is faster than the speed of light is impossible.

I then read this article in the New Yorker about space-geek billionaires like Elon Musk, who find space exciting.

That got me thinking about the Fermi Paradox, which questions why we haven't been visited by aliens, since there are billions of stars, many of which would likely have planets similar to ours; and some, civilizations more advanced than ours.

What followed was a quick check on the speed of light relative to the fastest speed humans have ever traveled in space.  Simply put, light is 25,000 times faster than our top speed.

I then checked what astronomers consider the nearest planets to our solar system.  Here they are listed.

So, there's a planet just 4.2 light years away, but it's way too cold.  At 16.6 light years away, there's Gliese 832c which could possibly be warm/cool enough for us.  Whether its just one big ocean seems to be an open question, but let's set that aside for now, along with other threshold questions like "Would our bodies hold up in space if we traveled for years on end"?

The main point that strikes me is that, sure, there might be space-freaks out there who'd want to spend 16.6 years on a space craft, but we're talking 25,000 times that.  Recorded history is but a few thousand years.

Ok, but what if we discover how to speed up our rockets and develop a spaceship that can travel a hundred times faster than the fastest we can travel in our present age?  Well, we'd still be traveling in space for about as long as it's been since Europeans came to the New World.

My point is that it may simply be physically impossible to travel anywhere near the speed of light, which means that all those other habitable planets out there in the universe that are likely to have civilizations more advanced than ours may have realized this, and made peace with that limitation: a solar system like ours is essentially, alone.

Update: In a twitter post on 6/30/18 I laid out a few more facts:
  * our planet's first radio wave transmissions are now 200 light years deep into space
  * our most refined listening instruments, by the year 2025, will be able to hear 150 light years into space.

This answers the question of why we haven't picked up intelligent radio wave signals from outer space.  As before, the distances involved are just too great--assuming one can't travel faster than the speed of light.  In other words, the problem with space exploration beyond our own solar system will be that space is too, ... spacey.