What makes this different than anything else the government/private sector does that's not worth the time or money? For example, we loose a couple billion dollars a year to illegal immigrants by either Americans loosing work or them sending their moneys earned here over seas to their home countries. We could rid ourselves of the illegal immigrants over the course of 5 or 6 years for a cost of only 500-600 million a year and in turn save billions a year. And that of all things isn't even up for discussion. Illegal immigrants have given us no beneficially gain to society and only cause us as a nation more problems and costs us way to much money for absolutely nothing in return other than to those people who hire them. In my opinion , at least SETI has the possibility for eventual discovery, and also for greatness. People should stop trying to impair ideas and technology that could eventually be beneficial to the human race, and maybe should start focusing on the problems that have no monetary/technological/cultural gains for society, such as getting rid of the illegal immigrants that cost us money every year and fill up our jail cells. The chances of finding life are indeed wishful thinking at best but it is out there. The universe is to big to be able to find something over night, with hundreds of possible galaxy's, thousands of suns, and millions of planets, if theres not someone else out there, I feel it would be a complete waste of space. But on the other hand we will never know if we don't try to find them. On a more positive note, maybe they would be willing to trade cheap labor for advanced technology.:)