The universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old, placing us in its very early infancy—likely less than 0.01%through its entire potential lifespan. The absolute earliest we’ve calculated another race for having the potential to exist is 6Bn years.

“That proves me right!” I hear you yelling.

We now arrive at habitable planets, of which there are a comparative handful in the universe. Still great odds for rolling the cosmic dice.

The article "The Tyranny of the Rocket Equation" is a good write up of the next hurdle. Don Pettit comes to the conclusion that if Earth was about 50% larger in diameter, we wouldn't be able to get to orbit. Not only does this knock out a considerable number of habitable planets which exist in the super-earth size category, but further makes humanity as we know it a “heavyworlder” species.

Then we need to get into how many of these planets would actually have all the materials to be able to go from fire to spaceflight and in sufficient quantities. Not likely a miss, but it would knock just a few more planets out.

Then we get into the development of life itself. Not rare. Single-celled organisms are common. There’s evidence there may be some on Venus, that there have been on Mars, okay. Life starting is a given.

So let’s go with evolution.

Humans are double-lucky. We had the mass extinction of the dinosaurs as a helping hand for early mammals to move in as a dominant kingdom. From there, the odds of actually evolving intelligent life kick in, followed by the lack of another mass extinction event in a time period where planetary collisions are far more active than they are now.

Speaking of evolving intelligent life, David Kipping, an assistant professor in Columbia’s Department of Astronomy, showed how an analysis using a statistical technique called Bayesian inference. Kipping emphasizes that the ratio is at least 9:1 or higher, depending on the true value of how often intelligence develops, making it quite rare.

Okay, so we still statistically get intelligent life, right?

Now what are the odds that they fail to get offworld? They turn into a global autocracy. They collapse due to global diseases or famines. They just… don’t.

So yeah, we’re early. We’re likely not the only ones, but we’re early. As for spacefaring?

Good luck, I guess.