Well said Fuzzy.

Ditto... you hit the nail on the head there, Fuzzy... right on the head.

Yup, it really annoys me when governments can fund seemingly pointless research projects [studying the effects of wind on leaves], yet more important research [such as SETI] gets little or no funding from government[s]

Still, there are various corporations who have benefited from space research/exploration, electronics, fabrics, metals, etc, so perhaps they could contribute something to help SETI's research to help keep going.

Exactly... Those who benefited and who can benefit from positive PR spin should get behind this. Which was the point of the OP.

If only I had the influence in the right ears... I'd say a few words to that effect.  Still, companies like Microsoft and Apple could help out, some of the electronics giants, too.

Bravo, Heavenfall. Excellent find.

Corporations, the great saviors of humanity. *booming music*

Ah yes, Batman, Iron Man, Green Arrow and every other comic book ultra super rich archetype.  That's why they're comics, so comical.

I think you've seen the movie Contact one too many times there Jafo.  Starting to take it a little too seriously.

Genesis states the first man and woman but that other people physically predate them.   Hmm, people but not the first man and woman, maybe aliens?  The Vatican has already publicly explained there is no religious conflict with the existence of alien life.

SETI is an outdated money sink pork program, one of a great many.  The times are changing.  We can't continue to afford spending like this in an unsustainable manner.  Sure removing one straw won't appear to effect the haystack but try to look on the bright side.  The more we cut, then the more we can redirect to the next generation SETI like program in the future.  A former NASA director once said: "If the public knew the real size of our budget, they'd riot."

The way I personally see SETI, is an obstacle preventing a better future program to replace it and has an improved chance to reach the same objective.

So who funds the SETI search now?
Current SETI searches are funded by a few major donors (such as William Hewlett, David Packard, Gordon Moore, Paul Allen, and Barney Oliver), foundations and many individuals.

- http://www.seti.org/faq

Not really.

The amount of money being spent on SETI is completely insignificant.  Its current budget is something like $3 million a year, which is nothing compared to any project.  The cost of a next generation radio telescope like the SKA is around $2 billion, and even a smaller project like LOFAR is somewhere around $150 million.  Basically, even if you saved the money from SETI for some bigger project, I don't think you would even be keeping pace with inflation.  It would certainty take you literally a hundred years or so to save up that money enough to do anything.

I also very much doubt that a former NASA director said that since NASA's budget hasnt been very high since the Apollo years, and people knew how much was being spent back then.  It's also mostly irrelevant since NASA doesn't have much to do with SETI - SETI doesn't get any government funds directly, although they can get funding from NSF grants and the like.

Funny, talking about money and sustainability as if they are not mutually exclusive concepts. Let me provide a somewhat similar quote, attributed to Henry Ford; "It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." But that's for a different discussion

Could you provide a source for that quote btw?

And of course the Vatican would say alien life doens't conflict with their views. They're realistic enough to realise there is a very slim chance they might be proven wrong if they said it did. And they're not about updating their views when new evidence is presented now are they?

Now i admit that Mr. Hawking is a LOT smarter than me, but i have to disagree with that. If these aliens were aggressive, like humans, wouldn't it be more likely they had destroyed themselves by fighing each other long before developing interstellar travel technology? Like humans. (Prove me wrong, i dare you! ).

Yes it is, and thats why people vote on things.  So that when people decide spending is wasteful they can stop paying it as a group...and some people are always going to bitch about whatever was stopped just as some people are always going to bitch about paying for it in the first place.

Personally, if SETI had produced any results I'd see the point.  As it is I do not.  We have enough problems here already that we could be investing in fixing.

I wouldn't mind NASA coming back at some point but short term I don't see the point there either.  The R&D that space exploration enabled seemed to be becoming mostly irrelevant before funding got shut off.

Now if only we stopped paying so much money to bomb the shit out of everyone I guess I'd be in a better mood about things.

Would be nice.

There you go.

Seriously, though: Discoveries rarely come by schedule or on demand. It takes time and patience, and yes... because the equipment is not free, it takes money. Tax money is not used, unless a government agency tasks SETI with a specific problem, which is then paid for as any contractor/subcontractor would be: Not charity or a give-away.