It sort comes down to sheer weight of numbers. How many potential environments exist, how do we identify them. Our own galaxy contains a 100 billion stars plus. Even if we use Drake's equations at its most extreme, we still end with millions of potential targets. We then get into the issue of size. Space is big, really big, and while life most certainly exists in some form out there, the search will become generational just to locate one successful target
I believe solving simple poverty through social programs instead of capital programs could do more for our evolution of civil rights, than even over two thousand years of Religion.
I suppose the concept of an ant located in South Africa communicating and/or visiting with another ant located in New Jersey is tantamount to Earthlings finding other intelligent species in the Universe? Actually it's probably easier and more likely the ants will connect compared to Earthlings finding other intelligent species. Anything is possible but the odds? So far we can't even figure out how to travel to Mars! How many years has Voyager been traveling in our solar system at ~50,000mph and one is just now exiting into space? Never mind having new technology...we don't even have the money to go to Mars, or the Moon, or anywhere beyond Earth's orbit. Unless there are other affordable technologies yet to be discovered which allow light-speed travel, or multiple light-speed travel, it would seem Earthlings and others are relegated to their respective rocks. Just as the two ants will never connect...perhaps this is the destiny of intelligent beings as well...
In my opinion, the public sector sector should be promoting infrastructure according to a federal Standard established by our federal Congress. The physical layer of infrastructure is usually capital intensive and could be best built through general tax revenues, instead of through competition. The paradigm should be "conduits to markets" to lower that cost to the private sector. MagLev public transportation in vacuum environments could be a cost effective boon to any private sector as a form of infrastructure.
