Larry Niven's Ringworld series hinges the human future on "tweaking" by other alien races. The "Puppeteer" species senses that the Kzinti are too aggressive a race to trade with, so they trick another alien race, The Outsiders, into stumbling into Earth, and selling the humans there a faster-than-light propulsion system. This gives the humans a tactical advantage over the Kzinti when the Puppeteers cause a series of "Man-Kzin Wars". The purpose of this whole process is to breed the violent Kzinti out of their own race, by letting them get killed by the superior equipped humans. It works.
If you didn't follow that, its okay. I barely can. The point is, humans obtain FTL equipment via aliens that already possess it. We do so by buying it on credit.
TAE's plan: sell the moon to aliens. The moon possesses higher than usual amounts of deuterium, and low gravity. In exchange for FTL travel technology, we could barter away the moon's resources, as well as allow an alien species to set up a trading/mining outpost there, where they could further sell us more technology at their leisure. And of course, once equipped with FTL technology, humans wouldn't really need our moon. Or Earth, even.
But how to get aliens here? TAE suggests we change our SETI program into a craigslist-style posting: "Wanted: one faster-than-light propulsion system. Will pay cash. Have deuterium laden moon, willing to trade."
What alien could resist?
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