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| Personal background |
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Greetings! I work as an electronics engineer and software designer. Scientific pursuits of all kinds are a passion, especially those that are “space†related. My hobbies include electronics, robotics, programming, ham radio (20 years -N7JXK), high power rocketry, and planetary science, to name a few. I also enjoy gourmet cooking and fine wines, when not involved in "geek" stuff.
I am also in the early stages of building a self-sufficient home in Southern Arizona, which will utilize rainwater harvesting, gray-water recycling, composting toilets, 100% off-grid solar power, and other environmentally friendly technologies. This is a long-term project currently funded only by my modest income. I own a total of 30 acres, which consists of a private mountaintop and a large canyon. (Which, if I might add, may consider selling a ten-acre parcel to another party with similar goals..)
I am a strong advocate of manned space exploration, and am very disappointed in the lack of progress we, as a species, are making in colonizing our neighboring planets; Earth’s moon & Mars in particular. The simple fact is, humans must go beyond this planet or we will surely be doomed to perish here! A more urgent, and completely overlooked issue: Once Earth’s fossil fuel resources begin to run out, (estimated to be a few years or perhaps decades at most) space travel will only become more costly, if not impossible. Time is of the essence!
Although the Space Shuttle program has been beneficial in many ways, it seems to me that it is mostly a waste of money at this point. The tens of Billions of dollars spent to put satellites in earth orbit could have already created a permanent colony on Mars! Satellites can be put in orbit with low cost single-launch vehicles. I also cannot see any justification for the International Space Station. It is just another excuse to keep the space-cow (space-shuttle) program going. Where is NASA’s priority, I often wonder?
email: ben@neomagus(Remove-this-part).com |
| Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home |
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The fact that organic molecules ("sugar" for one) now appear to exist in deep space, along with already known amino acids, it seems obvious to me that "we" are on the brink of discovering a wealth of ET life in one form or another.
I am not convinced that transmission of a beacon signal would be a good idea. To start with, it seems unlikely that we would encounter a civilization that is both technologically advanced and within a reasonable proximity of Earth. However, if such a civilization did exist, based on virtually all of human history (or any other animal/life behavior for that matter), the potential for invasion/exploitation could not be reasonably ruled out. I see absolutely no reason to assume that a more advanced culture will be a peaceful one, and the cost of such a miscalculation could be unthinkable. Such a situation should be approached with some caution, in my opinion. There is also some question of the amount of energy that would have to be used to produce a significant signal strength at any reasonable distance. Where we might assume that an advanced alien civilization has much higher-powered transmission capabilities, our current technology limits the useful power that we could use in such a scheme, except for perhaps the nearest systems in our own Galaxy.
I think the Seti@home program is brilliant. The concurrent processing of numerouos computers is a fine way to digest the massive amounts of data that are collected in this endeavor. With all their capability, today’s desktop computers are nothing less than amazing, and always improving. Additionally, the participation of the general public in such a basic scientific experiment can only benefit the scientific community as a whole.
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