I don't think that simply pointing in a random direction aand pulling the trigger will work well as a mechanism for picking a destination for our first interstellar journey. Don't get me wrong, we will learn a huge amount no matter where we go. But it would perhaps be better if we pick someplace not too like Earth.
...! Hmm??? I assure you it's true- we should not pick a place too like our planet. Oh, sure, we'll face lots of problems. On the other hand, we may not have to face a long list of others. Maybe we should pick a place that gives us easy probllems to work with. That means, to me, that we pick someplace that will not harbor life like us. Specifically life like micro-organisms. As a race that can't even travel around our own planet and be guaranteed to survive, do we want to tempt disaster by picking up something while on vacation? I'm sure that we'll find something interesting no matter where we go.
I think that just picking the crew will provide us endless entertainment :). Can you imagine the newest prime-time show: Dancing TO the Stars... Anyway, it's going to be some rough job. We willl have to try to gather a large group to crew the ship and every one will have to be honest about their opinions and emotions. I'll leave you to imagine how likely that is. And once you find ONE honest person, all you need is 5 or 10 thousand more. Why? Because if you can't find out how they really feel, how can you tell if they'll fit in with the rest of the crew? I guess, though, that in this large a crew, we can afford some people who simply don't care for the others (mildly). As I said, it's not going to be easy. Maybe we'd better start now...
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