But as a tool for stimulating discussion, creating engagement for SETI, or as an exemplar for Fermi Estimation, it's excellent.

I was born in '86 and since that time we've discovered thousands of exoplanets. Maybe we've crossed 10k by now. Blows my mind.

If you were born only 50 years prior the idea of a big bang would have been even more revolutionary.

I'm kind of drunk right now so I can't recall offhand when the idea of multiple galaxies was cemented but it was what, a decade or two prior to the bang innovation?

So I wonder what are the absolute hard limits to pinning down the variables in the Drake equation from a vantage point of a single star system and at this point in time actually are?

Like it seems to me that as time goes on we are able to do more and more from this singular vantage point, and that as time goes on we will be able to put some realistic parameters if not absolute values on many of these variables, enough at least that the Drake equation stops being an inspirational equation and starts being an objectively useful one like Ek = 1/2mv^2.