I was reading an article on the Voyagers and it got me to wondering. I know we are currently piggybacking on Acriebo but what about pigybacking on other telescopes? One set of telescopes that come to mind are the ones that make up NASA's DSN. And one of the goals as I understand it, is to expand the search to the southern hemisphere. Since one of the DSN complexes is in Austraila that would serve as a good starting point. Or is there something here that I am missing that prevents this? I know there would be a problem in filtering for things like the Voyager signals but is there a larger or different problem than soemting like that?

---

Lets stop piggybacking and build our own dish used exclusively to search for ET signals. How much would one cost? Do any exsist currenlty?

This is an issue of money.

Telescopes powerful enough to have statistically significant chances of finding genuine signals are extremely expensive; funds needed are in the millions.

The closest thing to "our own" dish is the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array.......but even in that case, the funding is not sufficient for the array to be maintained if it is only used exclusively for SETI work. The ATA is being shared and used to do other non-SETI astronomical research.

So even the ATA, which is the result of millions of dollars of private SETI Institute donations, is not being exclusively used for SETI research. And even then, the ATA is not even halfway completed in regards to what was originally envisioned; it will take millions more in donations for it to reach full completion.

The SETI@Home team doesn't have anywhere near the funds that the SETI Institute does, and must piggy-back on existing telescopes like Aricebo.

So unless you're willing to donate about ~10 million dollars either to help complete the ATA or build a new a telescope, SETI efforts will have to piggy-back or used shared time on the ATA.

This is an issue of money.

Telescopes powerful enough to have statistically significant chances of finding genuine signals are extremely expensive; funds needed are in the millions.

The closest thing to "our own" dish is the SETI Institute's Allen Telescope Array.......but even in that case, the funding is not sufficient for the array to be maintained if it is only used exclusively for SETI work. The ATA is being shared and used to do other non-SETI astronomical research.

So even the ATA, which is the result of millions of dollars of private SETI Institute donations, is not being exclusively used for SETI research. And even then, the ATA is not even halfway completed in regards to what was originally envisioned; it will take millions more in donations for it to reach full completion.

The SETI@Home team doesn't have anywhere near the funds that the SETI Institute does, and must piggy-back on existing telescopes like Aricebo.

So unless you're willing to donate about ~10 million dollars either to help complete the ATA or build a new a telescope, SETI efforts will have to piggy-back or used shared time on the ATA.

When I win the Lottery I will need the spend the money on something useful. :) Just planning ahead.