...they can just trace back the trajectory. If they're friendly, we're good. If they're hostile, well, we can't do a damn thing about them. They can just nudge a big old fat asteroid to smash into us at Mach 80, and move in for colonization a decade or two later.

If it happens in the far future, we'll either be a star-travelling super-advanced civilization or mutants struggling to survive a post-nuclear-war hellscape. Either way, we'll probably welcome them.

Fanning the flames of xenophobia and anti-intellectualism is one way to do it.

It's bad enough that fox viewers fear Black men and Mexicans are taking their jobs and marrying their daughters, now they've got to worry about space aliens and NASA foolishly spending all those tax dollars...

The most laughable thing here is that Voyager isn't going to be leaving Earth's neighborhood anytime soon. Any aliens sophisticated enough to find that mote of dust leaving our solar system already knows we're here. If that's the case, space aliens reading this Fox News "Science" story are probably watching in horror as we destroy ourselves. But if they do want this earth for themselves, easy takings, all they have to do is wait for the collapse of this civilization.

THE FARTHEST
VOYAGER IN SPACE
TUNE IN OR STREAM ON PBS
Wednesday, August 23, 9/8c pbs.org/farthest?#FarthestPBS

THE FARTHEST tells the captivating tales of the people and events behind one of humanity’s greatest achievements in exploration: NASA’s Voyager mission, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this August. The twin spacecraft—each with less computing power than a cell phone—used slingshot trajectories to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They sent back unprecedented images and data that revolutionized our understanding of the spectacular outer planets and their many peculiar moons.

http://www.pbs.org/the-farthest/home/?utm_source=promourl&utm_medium=direct&utm_campaign=thefarthest_2017

They don't actually have anything more from him than the National Geographic article linked above, written by his daughter. In it, she says "a debate has emerged", linking to an NYT article from June, and that "some think the endeavour is foolish and dangerous". But Frank Drake himself just says "nobody thought, even for a few seconds, about whether this might be a dangerous thing to do", but he doesn't say that he thinks it was 'dangerous' or foolish', or was a good idea. And he says that the chances are "very small" that the probes will ever be found anyway.

The Sun, however, has gone for the lie direct:

"But now the man who sent four maps into deep space fears this decision could prove to be disastrous."