Re: Re: starship-design: It's a bad, bad world out there

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 10/27/97 11:31:39 PM, stk@sunherald.infi.net wrote:

>KellySt@aol.com wrote:
>> 
>> >Unproven. There may be no MID-level civilizations here. Tribal
>> >civilizations have no radio noise. Mid-civs  like us emit everything.
>> >High-tech civs might not use radio for much communication. And if they
>> >weren't aiming at us, we might not hear them anyways. Besides, do you
>> >really think if they'd been detected we'd hear about it? Probably not.
>> 
>> If they had anything like our power grid we could easily detect them, and
>> given most of the detectors are non-clasified (and keeping anything
>> interesting classified is virtually imposible), if we found them we would
all
>> know.
>> 
>
>But it is very interesting and thought provoking that after META I
>detected 34 signals of possible ETI origin, most of which lie in the
>galactic plane, the US federal government decides to clip funding for
>SETI. Ironic, that as the paper said, "it savel all of .00002 percent of
>the national debt."
>
>I tend to think either:
>
>A: our government knows ETI's exist (not the roswell incident), and/or
>doesn't want it to be known by anyone, including themselves (likely)
>
>OR
>
>B: our government is prone to doing extremely coincidental things that
>just provoke to be examined by citizens such as I.
>
>But who knows. It makes for great science fiction though :)
>
>Kyle Mcallister

In a way those signals helped kill the program, but not in the way you'ld
thing.  NASA got funding by NEVER mentioning SETI.  It was a microwave
astronomy survey, period.  But the signals, and the possible SETI
implications got a lot of press.  Suddenly congressmen and senators were
geting calls about why was NASA wasting money searching for little green men.
 If the feds have so much money to waste on such things... etc.

The funding was pulled the next year.

You have to remember.  The general public thinks NASA is a MAJOR fraction of
the federal budget.  So surveys have shown that people think DOD and NASA
practically split all the federal budget between them (the public is
stageringly ignorant about the budget).  They thought META was big bucks, and
wanted it stoped NOW.  Congress obeyed the will of the people.

Kelly