At the same time, I think the Drake Equation was wildly....wildly optimistic.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it turned out that our nearest technological neighbor was in another galaxy....and that we'll never meet them nor be aware of their existence.
Life is extremely rare by almost every measure, even in our own solar system.
I agree. The Drake equation put the chance at developing life as 1 in 100. The chances of a single protein molecule forming into a polypeptide is 1 in 100 trillion trillion, and since the simplest life would require hundreds of thousands of these, the chance for life to arrive through abiogenesis would be several THOUSAND orders of magnitude smaller than what the Drake equation postulates.