[El Gato]

The Drake equation addresses the probability of technological life, and again, it concludes, generously, a 1/100th of a chance per spiral galaxy of having one planet capable of supporting technological life.

The Drake equation is great for playing "what if". But many of it's terms are little more than onager heuristic estimates (wild ass guesses). Consider just one, the fraction of stars that have planets. The estimate for that one has been steadily growing over the past decade or two.

Agree about the distances though, unless one of us (civilizations) can break the light speed barrier somehow, and figure that is the reason *they* aren't here.

It's also possible that they are waiting for us, that is they are behind us technologically, which gets to a couple of other factors in the Drake equation. How long to develop a technological civilization, and how long such civilizations last before blowing themselves up (or otherwise destroying themselves).

[ZX12R]

before blowing themselves up (or otherwise destroying themselves).

Like building a particle accelerator with energies capable of creating a bunch of miniature black holes with low velocity, only to find out there's no such thing as Hawking Radiation.

[Elsie]

Consider just one, the fraction of stars that have planets.

Fooey!

Let's ASSUME that EVERY star out there has planets: 100 in fact!

And ALL of them are a nice, StarTrekian M class planet.

Now just HOW will LIFE evolve on those planets?