The various SETI programs certainly have a science fiction-like romance about them, but they also represent the sorts of demanding challenges that underlie all good cutting-edge science---challenges requiring extreme discipline and dedication to finding answers while blazing trails into areas with many unknowns.
While it may be quite some time before we detect/confirm radio-frequency or other ETI artifact, I'm glad to be a small part of this endeavor.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
