You keep invoking some God but I don’t think he’s listening right now. - Charles Stross

See? Interstellar colonization is easy! You just need to devote a visible percentage of the resource of an entire interplanetary civilization to it for several hundred years, placing it in the tireless and efficient hands of robots ordered to strive for the goal for as long as it takes.

What happens if we don't do this?"
"I don't know. Probably we don't die. I mean, maybe probably. Possibly maybe probably."

He gestures at a skeletal contraption of chromed steel and thin, black leather that only Le Corbusier could have mistaken for a chair: “Have a seat.”