So I have heard people sometimes say the reason for no aliens is that complex life requires so many coincidences it is just incredibly unlikely to indecently arise anywhere else in the universe. I think it is a bit arrogant to assume all life has to mimic life found here on Earth, so forgetting the goldilocks zone for a minute, you still need life to emerge from nothing over the course of billions of years. Then you need complex life to emerge from that, and eventually civilization. But you know what else you need?
Extinction.
No extinction means no fossil fuels means no industrial revolution means no spacefaring. If it wasn’t for the dinosaurs, we would have nothing. Makes you wonder what we’re here for.
I conclude that any advanced alien lifeform that gets to this stage will have to use a source of power not used so much on Earth. Hydro and Thermal seem unlikely, it’s less portable and requires huge facilities, so it will probably have to something else. I imagine rivers of liquid gas, a space-faring civilization built upon lakes made up entirely of methane.
Edit:
It has been brought to my attention that fossil fuels are not in fact made up of ancient dead dinosaurs, and even if they were, we wouldn’t need a meteor to make this happen. I just like Dinos 
Maybe there’s better energy sources out there for space faring we haven’t found yet, or have but haven’t utilized in that way because its difficult to get enough of it in mass. We could use those things green energy sources theoretically, it’d require heavier use of batteries which has all its own problems.
Its also possible its quiet since maybe lifeforms don’t perceive the world that way, and have different senses, why bother with radio for comms if you never got around to developing auditory/visual/etc senses to start with. Maybe they’re originating planet bound due to very serious anatomical-physiological reasons and just exist with that in mind and limit exploration to small remote controlled drones or similar at most. Add on a different approach to existence and maybe they’re more ambivalent on the whole ‘temporarily cheat death by running off to a different planet’ band-aid patch and are focusing on stuff we haven’t thought of, and can’t eavesdrop in on so easy, to better address it.
We’re also in a sort of remote sub arm of a galaxy, life is a numbers game I figure, so who are we going to see out here but ourselves and maybe if lucky another life inhabited world super far away. We’re in the cosmic boonies.
I’ve seen speculation on that - A species that communicates with pheremones or ground vibrations or something might not be as interested in visual information, or have a hard time processing it. People who evolved on a high gravity planet might not just be able to shove enough hydrozine in to a rocket to break orbit. And, like you said, maybe they have a very different mentality or philosophy of life, and going out isn’t a priority or isn’t of interest.
Imagine we get in contact with people from another world, and the first tech we exchange is lidar for smell-o-vision!
this is often used to explain why starfleet is full of humans.
Right, and then we need the tech for communication since I’d imagine that’s how it’d go, first tech traded is to better understand each other in some way.
I was thinking something anatomically limiting the species so they can’t handle the g forces of liftoff for whatever reason, or they’re super short lived, so even a really short trip within their system would take generations .
Say they’re whales with thumbs. They’d have a very hard time with the G-forces, to say nothing of having to lift enough water to operate comfortably.
Something like I was picturing. Regardless, they’d have to going to opt for remote controlled or even automated drones to explore the universe in their stead while they go about daily life.