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SETI Gains Respect, NASA Funding
securitas writes "After having its funding cut off by Congress a decade ago, the SETI program has just received a NASA five-year grant (Google link) to participate as a lead team in the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which investigates the origin and future of life in the universe. For more information, see the Astrobiology Institute's announcement and the NASA press release."
The search for intelligent life on Earth continues.
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God, is that you?
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
I didn't know NASA had enough money to donate, with all the cutbacks and whatnot.
Sure you say that now, but you'll be crying when china has all of the lucrative exclusive extra terrestrial trade deals worked out and we're still trying to sell cars to canada.
It is important to note here that the U.S. government through its agency NASA has officially thrown support to the adherents of evolution.
If there is no evolution, then there is no chance that life would exist anywhere else in the universe because it would have had to have been Created only here. The New Testament of the Bible (in which most Creationists readily and eagerly believe) repeatedly claims that there is only one Son of God and that only through Him is salvation possible. This would mean that if by some chance that there were lifeforms elsewhere in the galaxy that they would have to be perfect beings or destined for Hell. Since a loving God wouldn't create beings guaranteed to spend eternity in the flames of Hades, it stands to reason that God would have only created Life here on Earth (where, again, He sent His Son).
But with NASA supporting the search for ET life, the government has implicitly thumbed its nose at the Creationists.
It's about time, if you ask me.
I have been pwned because my
Sometime back, we read NASA withdrew funding for DARPA, IIRC. What's so compelling for NASA to pump more funds into SETI? Some kind of social engineering at work here, methinks.
It's ironic, but NASA seems to be getting more attention after a spectacular failure (Colombia disaster)
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I never understood why it was so hard to give funding to a program that could make the most important discovery yet.... (except for oil on mars... that'd be the only thing that'd get us off this rock faster...)
At least they got the 24 hours of time to point Arecibo where they wanted before... now maybe they'll get more time, more radio telescope data to send out as workunits.
The whole program seemed to be a great use of national money to me when I first learned about SETI, and its still a good place to invest money I think.
Of course, I could be wrong....
That putting that trojan in the screensaver that lobbies congressmen was a good idea.....
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
It's now nice to know all those 60-Some data sets I've gone through at about 30 hours each weren't in vain.
SETI Institute Selected as Astrobiology Lead Team
The SETI Institute is proud to announce that it has been chosen as a lead team for NASA's Astrobiology Institute (NAI), the international research consortium coordinated through NAI's offices at NASA's Ames Research Center. NASA Ames is a long-standing partner of the SETI Institute in the search for life on other worlds, and we welcome this opportunity to deepen our scientific relationship.
Preemptive War on Terrorism. Almost taken care of.
Preemptive War on Little Green Men. That's our next Goal.
I mean, with all the infrastructure and the servers running smoothly I personally believe this to be a very promising effort. So are they in or are they out of the funding?
cu,
Lispy
why don't we just stop putting money into the arts too? according to you, we can't afford such frivolous things such as curiosity and expression and searching for meaning.
> Its about time that SETI got some serious funding, its mainly been kept going by enthusiastic amateurs over the last few years and at one point in the early 80s it actually looked like it was going to close
Hey, I'm all for the SETI thing (did over 7500 units on SETI@home myself), but I don't think using our tax dollars searching for aliens in a time when we've got the largest national debt in history makes alot of sense. Yeah, it might be cool to discover life elsewhere, but ya need to prioritize. One last point...the money that NASA spends (like most other govt. agencies) is hughly inefficient compared to that of private industry.
Just another day in Paradise
As much as i would love to support the search for life in the galaxy sometimes its not a good idea. Although i do think that as humans we should try to search any money we put into a project like this is as good as gone and in finacial hard times like this we cant afford to throw around much.
:P) attitudes like this piss me off enormously. All this stupid "we shouldn't put money into this, that and the other because of hard times/the poor/the children" is spurious.
At the risk of starting a flamewar (I'm in an asbestos suit
Fact: Agencies like NASA can stimulate the economy, by virtue of their sheer size. The same, but more so goes for the defense establishment
Fact: many items which we take for granted today would not be a reality if it wasn't for the research money the governments provided
I believe the single greatest hope for the eventual equality of all (which is somewhere in the american constitution, right?) is technology. You may or may not agree with this, you might say education, for instance, but more effiecient and cost effective ways of teaching and learning will come out of research.
The "I don't want to pay so my descendants will benefit" attitude is an attitude that would have wiped out the human race, or any species, for that matter, if it was rife. If you are bemoaning your contribution, there is nothing stopping you disappearing into the hills and living as a hermit (except that wouldn't fit in your comfort zone, would it), while the rest of us go and make progress for the benefit of the species as a whole.
This is also the reason that 20 new types of disposable wipe a year piss me off so badly.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
You know perfectly well that M class planets only exist in Star Trek. The same applies also to tachyon fields. :-) And no earth-like planets have ever been discovered around Proxima Centauri...
I think you should not be modded down as troll, because this is a good indicator about the data quality found on Interesting 5 Slashdot posts.
- Ismo
"PLZ resend disk 2 of TWO TOWERS"
Isn't it time for Slashdot to partner with NYT just like Google did (link-wise)? After all, Slashdot is a rather large referrer to NYT articles.
There was a headlining story on the NYT yesterday:
Gen. Tommy R. Franks said today that violence and uncertainty in Iraq made it unlikely that troop levels would be reduced "for the foreseeable future," and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld nearly doubled the estimated military costs there to $3.9 billion a month.
My math might be worse than Dubya's, but I figure it at about $130 million A DAY.
While it's great that we're "funding" SETI, perhaps some of the money we're pouring into Iraq would be better spent on science. Mars, anyone? Zubrin's plan calls for $30 billion for a long term program, just over 7 months worth of war. Which would you prefer, nonexistant WMDs or a manned landing on the Red Planet?
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