Rich <someone@somewhere.com> writes:

I don't know how much the Allen Telescope is going to cost,
or who's going to pay for it, or it's operation and staffing.

The Allen Telescope is paid for by Paul Allen (of Microsoft),
with smaller contributions from Nathan Myhrvold, also of
Microsoft, and contributions from the SETI institute and others.
Berkeley will probably run it, but in return they get a state
of the art radio telescope for much less than they would otherwise
pay.  [Note that this telescope will be used for radio astronomy
and SETI at the same time.  That's one of its beauties.]

But I don't expect it could be classified as a "tiny or
insignificant" cost. YMMV.

It's not tiny, but it is insignificant.  The total cost,
spread over about 5 years, is in the range of $25M. 
The next big public radio telescope (ALMA) is costing taxpayers 
about $50 million this year alone, and will take many years 
to complete, and will end up at least on order of magnitude 
more expensive.  The Allen array will end up costing less 
than 1/4 of the cost of the last radio telescope (Greenbank), 
which was built entirely with public funds.  
The total cost of the Allen Array will be less than 1/4 of
what NSF spends on new astronomy facilites *every year*.  
It is less than 1% of NASAs yearly expenditure on astronomy.
SETI is not a big project, even in the astronomy world.

And every once in a while, someone gets a brilliant idea 
and everything changes for the better.

The Allen telecope array, in many people's minds, is exactly
such an idea.  It's MUCH cheaper than any comparable telescope,
and for many purposes much more useful.  And who is driving this?
The SETI Institute, with private funds.

    Lou Scheffer