The Search For Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) had to shut down its Allen Telescope Array back in April. Not enough money. According to Mashable.com the Allen Telescope Array…
…consists of 42 20-feet-wide telescopes located some 300 miles north of San Francisco. Originally funded largely by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who donated $25 million to the project, the ATA had to go into hibernation after state budget cuts affected the project’s funding.
New funding has resurrected the project. The funding comes from private donors as well as the US Air force. That would be “the 1%” and the Federal government. Private donors, as we all know, sit atop their hordes like mythical dragons consuming members of the lower classes with dead-end, low wage jobs, and on occassion…let a few dollars slip out the cavern door to bribe politicians, bankers, and look for Alien life on other planets.
The Air Force just wants to test the Array for “Space Situational Awareness,” according to the article. Isn’t that just ripe with possibilities.
Maybe we’re checking Kepler 22-b for commies, Islamo-fascists, or maybe the Chinese?
Whatever the goals, the GEEK class will applaud the resumption of this “critically important” scientific undertaking. Ron Paul supporters may rightly scoff at the deployment of military budget dollars for investment in “foreign” electronic deployments. And Many Conservative will properly understand that this is also just one of the scientific communities last, best hopes for getting past the flaws in evolution, and their inability to explain the first cause behind the big bang theory, on their way to proving once and for all (damn it!) that God does not exist.
Or something like that.
