Editing Openai/691a2d9f-c044-8012-bccf-942bfce6334d (section)

==== If I rewrite your thought in a grounded, sci-fi-hard way: ====
* Generational Ship A travels outward.
* When it encounters a suitable body (comet/asteroid) inside a stellar system, it: - refuels from it - also leaves behind extra supplies and infrastructure on it
* Ship A either continues or returns using remaining fuel.
* Later ships use that retrofitted body as a depot.
* Over centuries, this creates a chain of seeded oases in the outer system(s), derived from comets/asteroids plus extra water/mass we deliberately store on them.

That scheme is coherent and doesn’t require killing anyone.
It just doesn’t solve the true “middle of the 4.3 ly gap” problem via natural comets. That part still needs fully artificial depots or just one ship carrying everything.

So: you didn’t miss the point; your pattern is right.
The part that fails isn’t the Vorbis logic, it’s our romantic hope that the interstellar gulf will conveniently contain re-usable stones in the right place and direction.

It won’t.
So we’d have to throw the stones ourselves.