Arecibo Observatory Collapsed • Hacker News Board

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#51

Post by claydavisss » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

wavefunction wrote: post #44

skuhn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockheed and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. That a fighter plane may or may not come out the other end is only nominally important, the key is to spend the money. The mo…

I think it's high time for Puerto Rico to become a US state. Puerto Rico has twice the population of the two Dakotas combined and the only way they'll receive more-equitable treatment is if they become a state. I think the will is there locally but there has been resistance from established political factions in the US who fear a place that might tip the balance of power one way or the other.

The only people really invested in this are the citizens of PR, mostly because it will mean a fiscal lifeline. For a citizen of the present USA, there is no upside to incorporating PR as a state.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#52

Post by gadders » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:09 PM UTC

m000 wrote: post #16

"Too big to fail" apparently doesn't apply for science projects. To put this in perspective, at the cost of a single F-35A, Arecibo could be running for ~7y with funding at 2011 levels.

Why did it fail? Was it a lack of ongoing maintenance?

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#53

Post by delecti » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

To clarify, "has collapsed" or "was collapsed"? I had heard they were planning to actively decommission it out of concerns for safety, and I don't trust that level of nuance from the auto-translate.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#54

Post by VikingCoder » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

skuhn wrote: post #38

m000 wrote: post #16

"Too big to fail" apparently doesn't apply for science projects. To put this in perspective, at the cost of a single F-35A, Arecibo could be running for ~7y with funding at 2011 levels.

The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockheed and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. That a fighter plane may or may not come out the other end is only nominally important, the key is to spend the money. The mo…

I've begun imagining that for Defense spending, government money that's spent in a State must have come from that State's federal income taxes.

I'm exhausted seeing data that indicates that states like mine put in more money than they get from the Federal government, and watching people from states that receive more than they put in talk about welfare state, wealth redistribution, etc.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#55

Post by fanf2 » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

rurban wrote: post #39

So planetary defense relies solely on a few 1m telescopes. Interesting. Maybe the "Dish" (Australia) also. The two remaining big ones, the chinese and the russian cannot do that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance The remaining bigs: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Sp... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RATAN-600

I am not sure what you mean by “planetary defence”?

One of the unusual things about Arecibo was that it could transmit as well as receive (like The Dish / Parkes telescope); that work is mostly done by the NASA deep space network, which uses fairly large steerable telescopes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#56

Post by Frost1x » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

Arubis wrote: post #46

ISL wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTE employee-count alone underestimates the impact of national-scale science infrastructure. naic.edu is down right now (I suspect they're busy at the moment), but their data is used by tens to hundreds of institutions, each partially employing faculty, postdocs, and students. For agencies like NSF, the science is sometimes almost secondary. What matters perhaps the most is that qualified and capable students con…

Yours is a convincing argument. How do we get better optics on this for the public at large, so as to better present arguments for funding science?

Not to digress too far but the general public at large won't even push to get funding for their own direct interests (e.g. COVID related stimulus right now). I don't know how we expect to get the general public to push for science.

Much of our society runs on pure momentum and very few people have the power to slightly shift the direction of that momentum.

One of the other large radio astronomy observatories in Greenback is also hurting for funding from what I understand. I've worked on a few collaborative research efforts utilizing the data and working with the observatory and the picture painted doesn't look promising there either. That may have changed more recently given the state of Arecibo.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#57

Post by moftz » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #42

skuhn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockheed and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. That a fighter plane may or may not come out the other end is only nominally important, the key is to spend the money. The mo…

We need to adopt similar strategies for getting e.g. green energy production off the ground. Thinking of things like solar panel production.

Except there is money to be made in the green energy industry. There's no money to be made building a giant radio telescope. Sometimes corporations have a need for scientific institutions and their patronage helps keep the lights on but I really can't think of any way that can apply to something meant to stare at the stars. What could help is designing a radio telescope that have both scientific use and military use like China's telescope in Argentina. You have one user willing to pay plenty for time on it and another user that is just happy to get some work done.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#58

Post by theFco » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

delecti wrote: post #53

To clarify, "has collapsed" or "was collapsed"? I had heard they were planning to actively decommission it out of concerns for safety, and I don't trust that level of nuance from the auto-translate.

The message says that it is a message that's announced with great sadness, as one says when someone passes away. I do not think that language would be used if the structure was being decommissioned in a controlled way (Note: Spanish is my first language).

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#59

Post by skuhn » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:14 PM UTC

ISL wrote: post #40

skuhn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockheed and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. That a fighter plane may or may not come out the other end is only nominally important, the key is to spend the money. The mo…

The FTE employee-count alone underestimates the impact of national-scale science infrastructure. naic.edu is down right now (I suspect they're busy at the moment), but their data is used by tens to hundreds of institutions, each partially employing faculty, postdocs, and students. For agencies like NSF, the science is sometimes almost secondary. What matters perhaps the most is that qualified and capable students con…

I agree that the impact of Arecibo and these kinds of installations is actually very outsized relative to the number of FTE employees who directly work on it. The larger scientific community are the ones who booked time on the telescope after all.

My point is that politically none of that matters. No one is getting elected because people got to book telescope time for their research. The incentives are not correctly aligned to support research and science.

To go back to the F-35 comparison: the NSF has annual funding of $8.3 billion. The F-35 program is projected to cost $21.7 billion per year through its lifespan (2001-2070). I bet it winds up even higher than that, because nothing has yet changed to prevent endless overruns.

So the F-35 makes jobs and maybe a little bit of interesting work gets done as a result of the project despite itself. We as a society could buy so much more than yet another war machine (and maybe not even a useful one) with that money and effort. What could NSF do with another $13 billion every year?

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#60

Post by ed25519FUUU » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:18 PM UTC

m000 wrote: post #16

"Too big to fail" apparently doesn't apply for science projects. To put this in perspective, at the cost of a single F-35A, Arecibo could be running for ~7y with funding at 2011 levels.

I’m very skeptical or maintenance quotes. It’s very rare something actually costs the government what it was quoted. For all we know it would have kept the satellite alive for barely another year.