One of the most intriguing and controversial space explorations, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence – SETI, as it is commonly known – made its humble beginnings on April 8, 1960 under the name "Project Ozma." Today, SETI has become a popular and powerful research organization committed to the search for intelligent life beyond our own planet. In 40 years, SETI’s equipment has grown in power by a factor of 100 trillion, spawned the imagination of millions, and even was the inspiration for Contact, a recent major motion picture starring Jodie Foster.

SPACE.com: What was your main motivation for starting the Ozma project?

Drake: My motivation was a fascination with the potential to detect other intelligent creatures different from us on different worlds. The idea to proceed came from the fact that at that time, this was 1959, we were building large radio telescopes and several new forms of much more sensitive radio receivers. The combination of the radio receivers and the new antennas made it possible for the first time in history to detect signals of the same intensity as we were then transmitting into space across the distances to the nearest stars.

SPACE.com: Did you have a lot of initial support for the project, or did people dismiss you as crazy?

Drake: The support to begin with was mixed. Interestingly, the more senior people at our institution – the National Radio Astronomy Observatory – were greatly in favor of the project. Some of the younger people thought that it wasn’t bona fide astronomy or a good use of resources, telescope time, and money.

The Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico is one of the facilities used by SETI.

SPACE.com: What did you say to those critics?

Drake: First, the detection of extraterrestrial life would be an extremely important discovery, and it justifies investing some resources in it. And secondly, just to deflect any criticism, we built equipment not only that could be used for project Ozma, but for conventional radio astronomy research. And the total price was $2,000, which is nothing even now – at least on the scheme of scientific instruments.

SPACE.com: How has the Ozma/SETI program grown since its beginnings?

Drake: The program has grown in power spectacularly. And equally important, it has now become a legitimate, regular part of scientific research.

SPACE.com: What’s your opinion about the popularization of SETI with books and movies such as Contact?

Drake: All of the movies that have popularized the search have been very helpful because they point out that such a search is possible. The movies that depict aliens as dangerous are not that good, but they don’t really hurt. The movie Contact was particularly helpful because it simultaneously showed the right way to search, and it showed that other ideas such as UFO’s are not making sense.

SPACE.com: Did people from the SETI project work directly with the producers of Contact?

Drake: Yes, we interacted a lot, not only with the producers, but also with the actors themselves. Jodie Foster visited with our people while they were working to see what goes on, as well as the mannerisms and the speech of real scientists doing SETI.

SPACE.com: SETI has produced a downloadable screen saver that allows users to help you scan the skies for extraterrestrial life from their personal computers. How did the SETI@home project get started, and where do you see the project helping your efforts as a whole?

Drake: SETI@home has been a spectacular success. It was started by a few volunteers who had an idea which, at the time, seemed very dicey. Perhaps not many people would participate, and those that did would be upset because their computers crashed or something. My estimate was that maybe 5,000 people would participate. Now, the actual number who have registered for SETI@home to this point is 1.7 million. And the computers haven’t crashed! The whole system has worked very well on many computer platforms and in many languages, and that’s a great credit to its designers (which isn’t us, by the way). The other thing it reveals is the tremendous unrevealed interest in the subject. We had no idea there were 1.7 million people out there eager to help if they could.

SPACE.com: Do you use SETI@home on your own computer?

Drake: Yeah, we all do. If you go around this office, you’ll see it running on everybody’s computer.

SPACE.com: The Planetary Report just had a major feature on the new advances in optical SETI, as opposed to a radio search. Are optical wavelengths better for SETI?

Drake: No, optical is not better, but we like to say it complements the radio search. As we understand the universe, still the most promising region to search is the radio spectrum -- and that’s because the universe is darkest and quietest there and information is carried with the least energy. But, we are dealing with intelligent creatures and they’re not predictable, and so it very well could be that they are using some other wavelength – optical, infrared – for their own purposes or for a signaling channel for reasons that we don’t know. Therefore, we say it’s fine for searches to be conducted at all wavelengths.

SPACE.com: How do you react to skeptics who say the SETI project is a waste of time and money – politicians, for example?

Drake: Well, we have been the victims of politics, and this is very unfortunate. It reflects a lack of understanding in the Congress about the importance and quality of our search, which is sad. Actually, though, since 1993, there has been no federal funding [for SETI] at all. We depend entirely on private gifts. Fortunately, in the public there are many, many knowledgeable generous people, including some that are in a position to contribute very large amounts of money to SETI programs.

SPACE.com: What’s your main vision or goal for SETI in the next 10 to 20 years, and beyond?

Drake: WelI, I have a very firm goal, and that’s that SETI should have its own very large radio telescope, because at the present time the greatest obstacle to progress is the lack of access to large telescopes. We [currently] get only a few weeks a year. It would be much better, not only to speed up the search, but to improve the quality of the search to have full-time access to a major telescope. Plus, we want to continue the rapid improvement of the rapid-receiving systems, which is possible because of the rapid improvement in computer systems.

SPACE.com: Are there already plans for such a telescope?

Drake: Yes, we’ve already made a decision to build such a thing. The first version is the 1-HT, which stands for 1-Hectare Telescope -- hectare being 10,000 square meters, or about two and a half acres. It will be made out of perhaps a thousand small antennas similar to what people have in their backyards. It will be at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory at the University of California in northern California; it’s about four or five years away.