Do you think we should send rockets with broad spectrum flora to planets that we've found to prepare for our eventual settlement there?

Yes, but right now they make sure everything going to mars does not even have bacteria on it...

Since it takes so long to establish a planet to be habitable, I would think we'd send rocket out ahead of us. If we tried to establish things after we arrive, I would think we'd have a much poorer chance of survival.

I really doubt there is life there. Part of the rocket could be to send a sampler down to the planet to test for what life there is, and keep from killing native stuff if there. And if so, should send a message back so we'd know.

We're talking 10,000 years before we can get there, that's barely enough time to establish a planet.

Honestly, no. There'd be no point for a number of reasons.

1) As of now, any attempt to travel to a nearby planet outside our solar system would take an immeasurably long time and no such flora could survive such a lengthy trip unless it was well tended by humans over many generates, in which case it wouldn't beat us to the planet.

2) Even if you got the flora to the planet, what's to say it wouldn't die almost immediately in the hostile environment? Flora have been specially designed over millions of years of evolution to survive well on our planet. Heck some plants can't even survive out of their preferred climates. You try taking a rhododendron to the tundra and see how well it does. A new planet (even one potentially habitable for human life) is likely to be filled with chemicals and harsh climates the plants/flora cannot survive.

3) Even if you got the plant to the planet, and genetically engineered it to handle the climate/conditions of the planet, what would it use for nutrients? The soil here on earth is highly enriched and full of nutrients for plants primarily because of the microbes in our soil which constantly break things down and produce chemicals necessary for plants in the process. Those microbes won't exist on this other planet. There can be natural geological (or whatever term it would be for this planet) processes that produce rich soils but you can't be guaranteed to land near one can you?

4) Let's say you got the flora to the planet, you engineered it to survive the harsh, foreign environment, and you landed it near naturally enriched soil so it could grow. You'd still have the unavoidable issue that it would take millennia if not longer for the plants to have any positive effect on the environment. I presume your intent with this project is to terraform the planet. But it took the Earth about a billion years and huge amounts of algae before oxygen became a major component of the atmosphere for life (and eventually humans) to breath. You'd need to somehow have your flora survive, grow, and spread for thousands of years before humans ever stepped on the planet and even then you probably wouldn't have had a major impact on the planet's climate, especially if it happens to be a very active or especially dead planet.

The only planet other than Earth that is suitable for our settlement there is unequivocally Mars.

It is known among some people that the temperature on the Red Planet is significantly lower than that on Earth - usually freezing, in fact. This is due to its larger orbit around the sun with an average distance of 1.5 AU. Obviously, the sun feels weaker there on Mars - less than half as much sunshine throughout the globe. What implication does this have on your Earth bound broad spectrum flora?? Can it pass the test on Mars??

Any place that our plants *might* survive means a place where past life may have existed - and, we should study that first before altering the environment there.

And, in most cases - nothing living would survive....

Just how do we MAKE a founder species when we do not know what the conditions are on the planet? Evolution does not work that way.

No,

because any natives there might respond with broad spectrum weaponry.

Cheers!