"If you look at it relativistically the you ignore my point about their family being hundreds of years only when they get home."

Why would they go home, if they were short-lived? Colonists, etc. would not need to return home. If they had longer lifetimes it would not matter that they were gone a few hundred. LOTS of SF written about the effects of time-dialted travel on civilizations and people.


"Not to mention the danger of hitting some non magnetic object while traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light. "

One can always use a large ball of frozen water as a shield ( also useful as emergency fuel for low-speed operations) ( See Clarke et al)




"It still remains an awful lot of trouble to go to buzz airports and make circles in cornfields. "


You are presuming that is what they are doing. What would an ant say about humans- " Seems like a lot of effort just to step on us." Perhaps thay have some pupeose that you are not aware of.