Vad år fick vi signalen från Vega?

I romanen är det inte särskilt tydligt, men maskinen verkar ha tagit omkring ett decennium (och möjligen mellan 5-15 år) för att bygga vilket innebär att signalen antogs (antagligen) runt 1989-90.

IT TOOK years, it was a technological dream and a diplomatic nightmare, but finally they got around to building the Machine. Various neologisms were proposed, and project names evocative of ancient myths.

och

Eventually, it came to half a trillion dollars a year for some years, roughly a third of the total military budget--nuclear and conventional--of the planet.

och när maskinen är klar

The daily headlines in The New York Times were, by any dispassionate measure, more bizarre than any in the now defunct National Enquirer a decade earlier.

skriptet indikerar att signalen mottogs 1996 eller början av 1997.

Ellie verkar bli medlem i SETI i New Mexico 1993

EXT. NEW MEXICO DESERT - AERIAL SHOT - NIGHT

A 1967 T-Bird travels swiftly along a dirt road through the moonlit desert. The VIEW CLIMBS, WIDENS to include a huge radio telescope, and as we come around we see an even more stunning sight: 30 more of them.

SUPERIMPOSE: SAPPORO, NEW MEXICO - 1993

När Drumlin besök är det ett valår (så förmodligen 1996)

      DRUMLIN
  Very well; since my appointment he's
  been made interim director.

              ELLIE
  Really?  Congratulations, by the
  way.

              DRUMLIN
  I'm surprised you even knew it was
  an election year.

... och signalen tas emot kort därefter.