1) no such _space_ antennas are in operation that we know of, besides RadioAstron - VSOP-2 was
cancelled. Officially, at least. But Earth-based projects are well and going -
LOFAR,
SKA,
ALMA and few others, each having unique features and advantages. I wouldn't be surprised if some of such systems, possibly even including satellites, would be classified at the time, too.
2) yep, they are directional, must be. Long distance, no joke. But we talk billions USD invested into such searches (i mean total). And some of best minds of the planet working on it - and not for money, but for the idea. Manhatten project managed to happen just fine using way less effort and investment, i guess. But yes, may be you're right and i'm underestimating the task. One can hope.
As for my gut, it tells what it tells not because of the empty sky. It tells what it tells because of how i see intelligent life: a planetary catastrophe much worse than, say, oxygen catastrophe. In this, i dramatically differ from say James Lovelock's view - which is that despite initial problems, intelligent life should manage, with time, to adapt and thrive. I rarely disagree with him, but in this case i see things which force me to disagree with him on this matter. Those things is how whole biosphere is affected by humans, which in few words and most broad sense - is that we humans are likely to eventually violate majority, or even all, of bio-chemical adaptations cellular life has evolved to remain stable. We create chemical compounds for minute goals without any proper care about long-term effects, and we create them by dozens thousands. This is like messing with letters by some child who can't read: give the child some blocks forming up any readable line, let the child play with it, and soon enough the message disappears entirely. Well, life is nothing else than a long, long message of "DNA letters", and even now, it gets increasingly broken in both human population (increase of cancers and genetic diseases) and animals (same, plus already happening Sixth Great Extinction).
I know why it happens - "minute interests" are in fact what allows humans to survive short-term and must not be treated as an error. The way to fulfill those - is an error, but then often times proper way to fulfill those interests - is unaffordable luxury. There are different cases of specifics, but overall, i consider no party "guilty" in this. This all is quite natural way for intelligent life to exploit "newly discovered" mechanics of the matter. Leads to the doom of organic-based intelligent life.
There is still hope for AIs - if true AIs would be created before humans likely perish, - eventually surviving, but for human kind? Little hope in the long run, if you'd ask me. Same for similar water-based life everywhere, because it's ultimately same chemistry at work. Intellect "hacks" it because only technological civilization can do so (so before intellect, life builds up incredible complexities, but vulnerable to any sort of intelligent exploits, fragile in this sense), but then some (very short in galactic terms) time later - the natural biochemistry fails much planet-wide under too much of such hacks, ruining habitability for "hackers" (and most if not all other species, that is). Death is the result of such process.
And we already see it starting, mind you. Those are real places which called, unsurprisingly, the "
dead zones". Inconvinient truth...
Sure we can hope till the end, though - the dam thing dies last, eh. Heck, may be some type 3 civ will come in last moment and save our sorry butts, just because we didn't have it the ugliest of all possible ways. Heh. %)
