hmm, I really can't offer an opinion on that. What I wonder is what will we find ethically acceptable or not in terms of settling a new planet? If there are higher beings already there, do we say "ok a thousand of us will come live here and a thousand of you can live on our planet"? or will we try to conquer or annihilate them like we so often have the habit of doing here on Earth? Maybe we will say ok, ignore that planet and look for a new one, we can't settle there because someone's already there. But where will we draw the line? If our presence adversly affects the local life, will we only settle planets that have no life? Planets with only microbes? Diverse life but no sentients? Or will we have the same "manifest destiny" approach we did with North America?