Profile: Steve Cochrane

Personal background
I’m retired from the US Air Force after 25 years of active duty. I presently work for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Denver Colorado and live in Cheyenne Wyoming. My hobbies are Ham Radio, astronomy, building computers and outdoor activities (camping, hunting, and fishing).
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
1. Yes, I think the odds favor an abundance of extraterrestrial life, however, most of it is probably not intelligent life. I think sentient life forms are spread thinly throughout the universe and contacting another civilization will involve a long and consistent program.

I think we will discover the first extraterrestrial life forms in our own solar system, most likely Mars or on one of Jupiter’s moons. If MARS does not have life today I think it probably did during it’s warmer wetter period. We’ll probably find fossils on Mars whenever our society becomes a little less short sited and starts getting on with the manned exploration and settlement of our solar system.

I see only benefits from the discovery of extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise. It may upset some people because of their beliefs and agendas, but I think it’s time our species and civilization matured and I think finding extraterrestrial life would push us in that direction.

2. Transmitting a signal periodically for an extended period of time would be a great idea. Say once per year for about a month duration with a repeating message. I’m not sure what the message would be, probably something about our planet and species with some information on how to contact us.

3. I was running Seti @ Home shortly after it first started and then dropped out because I found it used to much of my computers resources and I became very busy with my job. But since I started building my own computers and now have five of them, I have the computer power to do it more efficiently and decided it was a good time to get back into it. I think it’s an excellent way for people to be involved with cutting edge scientific research. I wish other projects that required lots of computational resources would do the same. I think Seti @ Home is a great project and hope it succeeds in discovering a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization in the near future. My only suggestion is make sure there is a plan for keeping the project going into the distant futu
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