Another complication is the expansion rate of the universe, which is the same for every position within the universe.
At the moment the expansion rate is estimated at about 73km/s/Mpc, where Mpc stands for megaparsec, a unit of distance. (There's heavy debate on this value though, some say it should be lower, like 68)
So the further away an object is, the faster it's receding from us.
Consequently, any object or point in the universe beyond the Hubble radius, approx 14.7B lightyears, has recession speeds faster than the speed of light.
These parts of outside of our observable universe are inaccessible to us, physically but also sensory.
We have no clear idea how large the universe is, we only know limits of our observable universe (constrained to the Hubble radius), but if there's intelligent life out there then some or perhaps all of it may be impossible to reach for us or impossible for them to reach us.