Everything had to align just right for Earth to make a bunch of dumb fuck apes willing to strap themselves onto rockets, have a planet small enough that the rocket could even overcome gravity to enter orbit using chemical rockets, and a World War and Cold War to accelerate things.
Given the estimated number of planets in this galaxy alone, it's particularly guaranteed that very similar events have occurred on multiple worlds. Unless you're proposing that all theoretical alien races are Vulcan level logical then tensions and interstate conflicts will always exist that will advance technology. This is practically an inevitability unless the race question is a hive mind species.