Profile: Rod Olsen

Personal background
My name is Rod Olsen, aka "Ollie" or "greyollie". I am a keen web user as I am housebound by lifelong illness. I have been fascinated with astronomy since I was a school kid in the 1950s. Once I was a teacher. On the day Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon I closed the school I ran in a little outback (remote) village and sent the children to the few homes that had TV so all could watch the moonlanding. I now live in Canberra, near the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Facility. One of my sons inherited my space "bug", becoming an engineer and working for a time at the Parkes Radio Telescope (in the movie "The Dish"). he helped upgrade of the Dish for the Galileo Mission. Parkes still does radio astronomy, with a unit from SETI Australia getting SETI data, while the Dish is doing other radio astronomy work. Like all Australians, I am looking forward to getting SETI data from Parkes to analyse like we now do for Arecibo.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I believe there is life across the universe, including our galaxy. I believe it is only a matter of time till we make contact. It will be the most wonderful and exciting time, helping to bring all peope on Earth closer together as they learn we are not alone. Our world will be a more united and peaceful place because of ETI contact bringing us together as "people of Earth". I certainly believe we should also send messages out ourselves. At the moment our TV broadcasts are already 40 light years from Earth. I think it is vital we send real signals as I would not want an ETI to only learn about us, and think about us, based only on our TV programs. I think SETI is the most important science program in the world today because it makes it possible for millions of ordinary people to be part of the greatest and most important exploration effort that humans have ever made.
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