Funding Cuts Take Alien-Hunting Observatory Offline

[thethingthatlurks]

(SETI@Home, please help), gimme me back some reason to hope plz.

I just set up SETI@Home on my laptop last week it allready sent some completed work back to them and is more than half way through another set.

Thank you!
There are other applications as well if you are interested, and any amount of processing power you would be willing to contribute is greatly appreciated. Soo...yeah. Science and distributed computing accelerating the advancement thereof ftw!

 

[NaramSuen]

The phrase "penny wise, pound foolish" always comes to mind when I hear about these types of budget cuts.

 

[cantgetaname]

I am very sad that this is happening. It is a VERY small amount of money they are putting into it (SETI gets funding privately too)and for, just the aspect of their mission POSSIBLY working, is TOTALLY worth it

Considering SETI is basically looking for a needle that we don't even know exists in the unfathomably huge haystack that is the universe, and the ridiculous deficit we're in, I'm not terribly upset about this. Besides, a hyper-advanced alien civilization would probably have an easier time finding us than we would have finding them.

And it's more like trying to find a specific needle in a stack identical needles...

 

[Littlee300]

How else are we going to find Prothean technology and join the our galaxy's galactic civilization?

 

[Antari]

As much as it sucks to be done. It kind of has to. Its alot of money just to say, ok yep there are aliens, and realistically its not the only mission looking for alien life. Its just one type.

 

[Weaver]

I think Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Gabe Newell should just donate 10 million each.

 

[infohippie]

This makes me both sad and angry. We can spend money by the truckload fighting starting pointless wars, give a fortune in handouts to bankers who just lost a fortune through greed and short-sightedness, but we can't come up with a bit of comparative loose change to fund important, potentially world-altering science. Our priorities, as a species, are a bit out of whack.

EDIT: I just saw their donation page. I'm chipping in, anyone else?

 

[pdgeorge]

Finding out if life exists on other planets seems like the most frivolous thing to be honest.
We couldn't even get to another planet that had life even if there was. The closest we'll get is "oh! Hey there IS life on other planets, well what do you know about that..." then billions more gets spent on finding ways to contact another species that will not understand us/we won't understand them because there will be NOTHING in common between us so any communication between us would fail.

If people are genuinely that interested in this stuff, rather them making other people spend their money on it (other people pay taxes, but then their tax money goes to something that's a complete waste in their opinion) if YOU are interested in this stuff, then YOU donate to them.

 

[mew4ever23]

Ah, that sucks that SETI's going into hibernation.

Hey SETI, if you're in desperate need of some money, why don't you track down whoever hacked PSN [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109568-Sony-Admits-Private-PSN-Info-Has-Been-Stolen-All-Of-It]? I hear they have some credit cards they could lend you...

(SETI.org [http://www.seti.org/])

Permalink

Dude, not funny.

 

[TornadoADV]

This makes me sad.

Come on, I'm sure we can make some cuts somewhere else. You know, like the military, which takes up about half of the actual budget.

If this does get taken down though, they better put those saved finances to something important, like education.

Uh, we've been spending less money per GDP on the military since the JFK Administration. Why don't we cut funding to programs that are actually increasing in cost per GDP, like Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid instead of decreasing, like Defense?

Because as far as I know, the Pentagon isn't threatening to utterly backrupt America in the next 20-30 years like SS and MC.

 

[Irridium]

This makes me sad.

Come on, I'm sure we can make some cuts somewhere else. You know, like the military, which takes up about half of the actual budget.

If this does get taken down though, they better put those saved finances to something important, like education.

Uh, we've been spending less money per GDP on the military since the JFK Administration. Why don't we cut funding to programs that are actually increasing in cost per GDP, like Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid instead of decreasing, like Defense?

Because as far as I know, the Pentagon isn't threatening to utterly backrupt America in the next 20-30 years like SS and MC.

That would also be a good idea. But it would also most likely be political suicide, so I doubt either side will propose it. Even if its better for people in the long run.

 

[theultimateend]

This makes me sad.

Come on, I'm sure we can make some cuts somewhere else. You know, like the military, which takes up about half of the actual budget.

If this does get taken down though, they better put those saved finances to something important, like education.

They will. They'll put it toward educating soldiers on how to use the latest in weaponry that the other part of the money went towards.

This makes me sad.

Come on, I'm sure we can make some cuts somewhere else. You know, like the military, which takes up about half of the actual budget.

If this does get taken down though, they better put those saved finances to something important, like education.

Uh, we've been spending less money per GDP on the military since the JFK Administration. Why don't we cut funding to programs that are actually increasing in cost per GDP, like Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid instead of decreasing, like Defense?

Because as far as I know, the Pentagon isn't threatening to utterly backrupt America in the next 20-30 years like SS and MC.

These social programs are not naturally all consuming. It is how they have changed since their inception (albeit I don't believe either was intended to stick around). MC has gone up in part because of the wildly corrupt medical market in the US.

SS can thank in part it's problems to synthetic nitrogen. Our population wouldn't be nearly as large as it is without that.

But regardless I'd need to see some evidence beyond guessing that the Pentagon isn't wasting money.

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/12/opinion/oe-schwartz12 - 29 Billion dollars a year just to maintain far more nuclear weapons than is necessary to keep. Reduce the amount of nukes down to just full extermination of surface life and leave it at that. The moment you are killing 1.1x all life on Earth you are overspending into Nuclear arms (well it's overspending if you have any nukes but American's are paranoid...at least rich ones).

"Our report, the first public examination of open-source data, shows that the U.S. spent at least $52.4 billion on nuclear weapons and programs in fiscal 2008. This budget, which spans many agencies, not just the Defense Department, does not count related costs for air defense, anti-submarine warfare, classified programs or most nuclear weapons-related intelligence programs."

How much was Seti? I'm going to assume a small fraction of that cost? Since the best I can find at the moment (I gotta get to work) are numbers in the millions.

Basically we are trying REALLY hard to cut tons of programs that help people in order to fund programs that help companies (which I guess are considered people now). It's maddening.

 

[spectrenihlus]

This makes me sad.

Come on, I'm sure we can make some cuts somewhere else. You know, like the military, which takes up about half of the actual budget.

If this does get taken down though, they better put those saved finances to something important, like education.

Uh, we've been spending less money per GDP on the military since the JFK Administration. Why don't we cut funding to programs that are actually increasing in cost per GDP, like Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid instead of decreasing, like Defense?

Because as far as I know, the Pentagon isn't threatening to utterly backrupt America in the next 20-30 years like SS and MC.

That would also be a good idea. But it would also most likely be political suicide, so I doubt either side will propose it. Even if its better for people in the long run.

Someone is going to need to fall on their sword for this.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

This is a good thing to cut. It doesn't have any practical purpose and in the end could do more harm than good.

Stephen Hawking famously said that ?If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn?t turn out very well for the Native Americans.?

I think we should shut our big yaps until we get our own stuff together, then we can worry about inflicting our presence on the rest of the universe.