Catching up with the Oumuamua Space Sailing Boat

The discovery of a space sail of extra-solar origin, the Oumuamua, made me wonder the nature of the civilization that created that thing. Humanity knows a lot about wind sailing, as it has been navigating on the ocean surface for the last 3000 years. For one thing, it is not just stretching out a membrane against the wind but wind sailing requires at least two independent sails to be able to maneuver the boat in a purposeful way and additionally, it requires much skill to do it without turning over the device and get it spinning uncontrollably. The fact that we observed one sail drifting and spinning freely in space (the Oumuamua) proves that it was not a probe of the extrasolars but some kind of "driftwood". The conclusion is that the extrasolars have not perfected their space travelling technique.

On the other hand, in our days wind sailing is a sport, since in the "adult", commercial world much better technologies have supplanted it, such as fossil fuel and nuclear energy engines. Wind sailing for commerce had a historically short life, of two three thousand years, a second in human history. It was primitive, difficult to control and totally unreliable. If the extrasolars are using solar wind ships, it means that they are at the starting phase of space travel, and soon we shall reach and pass their level.

Are they to be feared? Yes and no. Yes because we are in a vulnerable instant, like the Japanese without ocean-going vehicles being visited by Portuguese sailors in the 17th century. No, since the technological gap is not large. It took Japan only a century to catch up and surpass the visitors.