In sci.space.policy Rich wrote:


In semi-infinite wisdom Andrew Nowicki answered:
When a reasonable person fails to attain his
goal, he either abandons the goal or tries
a different method of attaining the goal.
An idiot is usually defined as someone who
responds to failure by doubling his efforts.

NASA is an ossified bureaucracy, but they are
not idiots. When their big SETI program failed,
they abandoned it.

No, congress told them to stop spending money
on SETI. NASA would spend trillions on SETI if
they had the funds. NASA cannot even account
for where their current funds go, after a GAO
audit.

Yes, but that was not the reason of that funding cut.


SETI@homers ignore their
failures and have little if any interest in
modifying their search method.

What failures? SETI@home is an open research
project. Some expect it to work, but many,
myself included, think even negative evidence
worth having. We'll know what ain't there at
least.


More correctly, we know what wasn't where some time
ago. Remember, radio signals move at a finite speed,
so instead of "now" it is always looking at the past.

A positive result depends on there having been a
civilisation that was a strong radio source emitter
k years ago at the distance of k lightyears. This
is where Drake equation comes into play and why you
need not pay attention to whetever it then goes off
to conquer the stars or not.

The chance of detecting a signal from stars that are
say 5000 - 10000 lightyears awy depends on the chance
of there having been a civbilsation in the radio noise
phase among that relatively largis amount of stars
during teh past 5000-10000 years ago (though to be
sure about outermost stars, we have to listen for 5000
more years). Its an odd kind of archeology ;-)


Rich


--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++