Humanity has always progressed by expanding its range using technology

Not really - it has occassionally, but the vast majority of the human
colonization of the earth was done by people who set up housekeeping just down
the road from where they came from - then generation after generation did just
the same thing.
The vast majority of the human inhabited surface of the earth was settled in
paleo- and neo-lithic times by people who just walked there. It's
comparatively recently that ships of any kind were employed.

My answer to the Fermi paradox is quite simple - space travel is economically
unsustainable - it always costs more in resources than it brings in. So no
species anywhere in the galaxy can afford it over the long haul.



John Ordover