>>11041117No need for 'professional' study, it's easy even for anonymous retards to work it out.
'Moving out' from a species' home planet goes in three stages.
Stage one, the objects closest to the home planet that are easiest to live on and launch from are explored and colonized (in our solar system that means Moon and Mars, Venus is a siren's trap obviously).
Stage two, all of the major objects of the star system are explored and colonized, through the use of better propulsion systems and higher mass budgets afforded by launch from the lower gravity colonized worlds (eg Mars colonization lets us access Phobos and Deimos fairly easily and they represent quadrillions of tons of metal oxides to mine and refine, for building giant habitats and ships in space)
Stage three, all of the objects of the solar system worth grabbing are grabbed, and eventually used as building material for one thing or another. Entire small planets and moons are being deconstructed at this point because they are more useful as orbital mega-structure habitat and ship mass. Note that at stage three interstellar colonization is trivial to accomplish, it becomes possible to send trillion-ton flotillas of ships and resource bubbles to every star within a hundred light-years of the home system.
Stage four, the cancer has spread fully, the patient dies, and the construction of the Dyson swarm around the home star is complete. All objects including the previous home planet and even the biggest gas giants have been deconstructed to serve as basalt fibers and titanium struts and even simply as thin gravel and soil coverings for the interiors of quadrillions of giant O'Neill cylinder habitats. A good chunk of the home galaxy has been colonized at this point and a good chunk of that chunk of stars are also surrounded by completed Dyson swarms. Colony fleets are leaving the galaxy for other galaxies at a few percent of light speed, having pushed off of one another in opposite directions via laser.
