In infinite wisdom Sander Vesik answered:

In sci.space.policy Rich <someone@somewhere.com> 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.

The point is that NASA will spend as much money as it
can get, regardless of outcome. Like all bureaucracies,
status is determined by budget and headcount, not
by science, results, or efficiency.

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.

I don't see it as a useful distinction, SETI has no
hope (IMHO) of detecting anything not in the immediate
stellar neighborhood. Any signal's source cannot be
older than tens of years, maybe a hundred years at best.

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.

What do you claim the Drake equation will tell you *if*
an signal apparently from ET is received? It will tell
us no more then than it does now, which is what our
current baseless guess on the frequency of intelligent
ET life is.

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 ;-)

Indeed, a civilization with non-directional transmitters
stronger than stellar sources at waterhole frequencies.
Are you working on a plot for Enterprise by any chance?

Rich

Rich