I think that a wheel would help us, though--it's all about the time it takes for development. I remember playing an old Civilization game. It starts out where each turn is decades' worth of time. As you get more sophisticated, more major things are discovered in less time. Essentially, as we get more advanced, so do our tools for analysis. If alien technology is similar enough to our own concepts, we could possibly reverse-engineer it. Of course, whether we can do that without destroying the object in question or ourselves is a whole other debate.
Personally, I don't think we'll achieve Star Trek-like societies for quite a while, if ever. We're too factional as a planet to get our act together and unless we discover the interstellar equivalent of gold, there's no financial gain in it for people. Just look at some of the space programs around the world. Everything from development of future technology to
tracking NEOs is afforded a fraction of the funding it would cost for a single military jet. Some bombs we've dropped have cost more than the annual budget of research and development teams. Between that and the fact that close-minded, lazy people breed more than the intelligent/open-minded ones do, and science fiction will most likely remain so.
zen
P.S. Oh yah, [/rant].
Re: Alien Life
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