SPACE.com's President's Day poll asked which of the four front-running candidates would most advance space exploration. A reader comments:

To the Editor:

I read and took your President's Day Poll, but I found it to be disturbing in the extreme. You state that VP Gore has no apparent interest in space, but he was the person who was in charge of the U.S.-Russian panel that handled several different issues involving space, from launcher quotas to Russian involvement in the ISS (no matter what has happened to that deal since then), which would seem to indicate at least a passing interest in space. Senator McCain has expressed concerns over what is happening with the Russian part of the space station project and, given their recent diversion of hardware already promised to the ISS to their efforts to keep Mir flying, I can understand those concerns. I don't have any details of ex-Senator Brady's (sic) voting record on space, so I can't comment on his interest in space, or lack thereof.

A reader responds to the article "GOP Rep Reams NASA Over Russian Relationship," by Paul Hoversten.

To the Editor:

What's the big surprise? Ask Rep. Rohrabacher and the other Science Committee members where they were in 1993 when all this was proposed and blessed by Congress? Everyone working at NASA knew then that this was the eventual outcome of trying to use the space program as a diplomatic carrot. Goldin's push to include the Russians never had an ounce of science or logic behind it. Popular opinion has always been that he just wanted to create a legacy for himself. And he has, but I don't know why he's still the NASA Administrator.

Jim Dickerson

And here's a selection of reader responses to astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez's opinion piece "Alien Intelligence? Think Again."

To the Editor:

I just read with interest Mr. Gonzalez' opinion about ETI [extraterrestrial intelligence] in the Opinion's section of SPACE.com.

I've been a lay student of Darwinism for years now and have always felt that the likelihood of ETI, while possible, would be extremely improbable. Most lay people tend to think of evolution as having a "direction" in its progress toward intelligent life, with a natural culmination over time of something just like us. I'm afraid that's a long way from the truth. Evolution has no direction at all, except to make a critter more capable of existing in a particular environment. Intelligence is a very lucky accident. Millions and millions of species over 3 and a half billion years, and exactly ONE matches our criteria for intelligence. And we've matched that criteria only recently (geologically speaking).

Mr. Gonzalez brings something new to the debate by forcing consideration of the physical constraints of much of the universe, which may be antithetical to life at all, much less intelligence.

I'd like to see an estimate of the percentage of the known universe that would be incapable of supporting life at all, vs. the percentage known to capable of supporting life. Perhaps the Drake equation doesn't need scrapping...just some reworking.

John E. Thomas
 
 

To the Editor:

Our solar system has one planet right in the middle of the "water zone" and there is not only life on it but intelligent life. Until someone visits all the nearby stars and checks all the planets found in the water zones, the probability of life on a water zone planet must be calculated to be 100 percent. Only after this probability is considered should you calculate the effects of asteroids, moons, Jupiter gravitational wells, etc. The bottom line is we don't have enough information to draw a hard and fast conclusion!! Until we do we can only make assumptions based on incomplete evidence based on inconclusive data.

Stephen E. Brown
 
 

To the Editor:

I think it very foolish for Mr. Gonzalez to make such hasty pronouncements on the rarity of life in the universe. It reminds me of the scientists in the late 19th century who proclaimed that just about everything had been discovered. We have only just begun to look for life in our tiny little corner of a galaxy sharing a universe with billions of other galaxies. I think life is much more prevalent than we think. I truly believe that the galaxy is teeming with life and that intelligent life is common. I also believe that space is full of "alien" signals, but that we don't yet have the technology to receive them.

David Munson
 
 

To the Editor:

The author complains that people are too optimistic about "Alien Intelligence" and use optimistic assumptions. By the same token I could say the author is too pessimist and uses pessimistic assumptions.

The author mentions for example radiation levels in certain parts of galaxies as a bar to life. Isn't he assuming too much, about radiation resistance of life, carbon-based or not? Even with Earth life, radiation resistance varies by factors of millions.

Gil Andrade, Marlboro, Massachusetts
 
 

To the Editor:

If you can imagine it, it can happen. Yes the universe is a harsh environment but life did survive here. I find it difficult to believe that life does not exist elsewhere. Whether or not we have been visited is another great debate. I believe the probability is low that it is an ongoing occurrence, if it has ever occurred, but I do not doubt that there is intelligence out there perhaps so far surpassing us as to be unrecognizable by us. I do not know and I do not know how to determine it any more than I can determine that God exists. But many will debate that issue as well.

Let's just get on with the business of getting ourselves off this planet and out there.

Chris Frandsen