Small Armed Spaceships had their advantages too: they could land and take off, and could operate across a relatively wide range of planets.
The larger the spaceship, the narrower the range of planets it could land on and depart from.
Large passenger-cargo ships could hardly land on planets at all.
They were simply too massive. Escaping a planet's gravity was an extremely troublesome matter.
There was also the issue of their own gravitational pull.
The range of planets military warships could land on varied according to the class of the warship.
The smaller the spaceship, the lower its energy consumption.
These miniature spaceships were originally suited for exploring the vast Interstellar Era.
By now, humanity had explored a vast area centered around Space Jump routes!
If a new Space Jump route was discovered,
the first to explore it would be the major conglomerates and corporations.
Those major conglomerates and corporations could launch vast numbers of probes at once.
Tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of probes.
Because probes in the Interstellar Era had become very cheap.
There were also super-large energy exploration ships!
They could detect Energy Fluctuations throughout an entire region of space!
So it was very difficult for private individuals to gain anything. They had to go farther afield.
That placed extremely high demands on a spaceship's energy reserves.
With the support of modern technology, as long as there was energy, people could live anywhere.
Some explorers spent more than a decade on a single round-trip expedition.
Of course, most explorers were backed by foundations or conglomerates.
Naturally, that support was not free. If you discovered a planet or something similar, those foundations and conglomerates would receive a portion of the proceeds.
Humans were social animals. Not everyone could remain away from human society for too long.