SETI travel is the American BARBAROSSA : very long, very cold, very short of food

     "Packing for Mars" (and points east) ?
     Been there, done that - got the t-shirt.
     It says :  "I barely survived OPERATION BARBAROSSA ,winter of 1941-1942".
     Most didn't: survive (or get the t-shirt).
     Cock-eyed optimists and utopian libertarians, the Nazis cheerfully set off on a summer trip to visit the Urals, thinking it would be exactly like all those the articles in the German popular science magazines.

    Cunningly, in those magazines, as in their North American counterparts, the SF is thinly guised as non-fiction, to trap the willingly-gullible.
    The Germans knew the miles involved, knew of the cold and the mud, knew of the desperate food shortfalls that were 'situation-normal' for the USSR.
    Knew them as words and numbers on a page - but couldn't feel them in their bones.
    That bone-chilling opportunity came during the horrible winter of 1941-1942 and the following almost as horrible winters of '42-'43 and '43-'44.
    German and Russian bones litter the utopian path to the Urals to this day.
     Despite this detailed - horrific - object-lesson from WWII, much of the world's perpetual teenagers (scientists with great math skills and zilch in arithmetic skills) seek to emulate Hitler and his mad scheme - this time in the ultra cold and dark perpetually Russian winter of outer space - with deadly radiation instead of snipers to kill the unwary.
    Half of Hitler's brain has been found, it seems - alive - in the heads of our science cum space community.
    Won't you please join in to help them stop hurting themselves - and us.....??