Dr. Seth Shostak on the SETI shutdown.

[LongTomH]

Another link I got from Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy website: Dr.Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute gives the detailed lowdown on the shutdown of the Allen Telescope Array and why it's a foolish move:

On April 15, this phalanx of small antennas, built to eavesdrop on signals that might reach us from civilizations hundreds of trillions of miles distant, was put into park, and its multimillion channel receivers powered down. It's as if Columbus's armada of ships, having barely cleared Cadiz, were suddenly ordered back to Spain.

The reason for the shutdown is both prosaic and lamentable. Money. The Array was built as a joint project between the SETI Institute (my employer) and the University of California at Berkeley's Radio Astronomy Laboratory. The former raised the funds to construct the instrument, and UC Berkeley was responsible for operations. But the grievous financial situation of the State of California and reduced funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) have sharply curtailed the university's research budget, and private donations haven't yet been adequate to keep the Array in operation.

<snip>

Frankly, it's easy to suggest that basic research, the kind that's done for curiosity rather than to spawn a product, should take a back seat to immediate needs. I still recall the schoolboy in Australia who wanted to know why, with people starving in the world's baleful backwaters, the U.S. was spending hundreds of millions of dollars on "motorized skateboards sent to Mars." From his point of view, they did little more than paw at the dirt and make some nice photos.

<snip>

This hunt for alien biology in our solar system costs you a few dollars per year. What would be the surcharge to augment this exploration by adding a radio experiment that could turn up life on worlds around other stars? Life that's not microbial, not mindless moss, but as clever as we are?

A few additional cents.

The bold text was my addition.

Phil Plait commented on why this comes at a particularly poignant moment:

And there’s a little bit of salt in the wound because SETI was just ramping up to start investigating the exoplanets recently found by the Kepler mission as well. For the first time in human history we’re finding systems outside our own where habitable planets may exist. I think it’s worth giving them a listen.

Seth Shostak's comment that: "It's as if Columbus's armada of ships, having barely cleared Cadiz, were suddenly ordered back to Spain" echoes comments made after the cancellation of the Apollo project. I also recall the paralell that Dr. David Webb made between the cancellation of Apollo and the burning of the Ming Dynasty's fleet in 15th Century China. "Burning our boats" became the catch phrase for the tragic policies our leaders were - and are - following.

[leveymg]

1. They've heard us. They know we're here. They don't want to have anything to do with us.

(Or, they want us to think so, anyway.) Probably was a stupid idea, anyway, if they're anything like us (let's hope not).

[DirkGently]

2. Knowledge for knowledge's has beaten out of American values with the Stupid Stick.

[gejohnston]

3. afraid you may be right