Arecibo Observatory Collapsed • Hacker News Board

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#91

Post by readarticle » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:53 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.

You don’t have to think anything, there are millions of boricuas across the US who will happily fill you in on how divisive statehood is and how little mainland politics factor into it.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#92

Post by mnw21cam » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:53 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #79

colechristensen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One important piece of military preparedness is having a population of experienced engineers, manufacturing infrastructure, leadership, R&D, etc. Institutional knowledge is very real. Weapons programs also simply take decades. You might be able to churn out web apps in a few months, but cutting edge aircraft, not so much. What do we have? Unprecedented world peace. Why do we have it? American foreign policy. You have…

I would sooner credit the 35th rule of acquisition ("Peace is good for business") than American foreign policy for the lack of a global conflict.

Bad example. It's not to be confused with the 34th rule of acquisition (war is good for business).

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#93

Post by NikolaeVarius » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:54 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 mean, this sounds nice and all, but it is CLEARLY false

James Webb Space Telescope: Proposed Budget: $500 mil Current Budget: $10 Billion

Space Launch System Current Budget: $20 billion

ITER: Proposed Budget : 22 Billion Euro Current Proposed Budget: 64 Billion Euro

There are lots of science projects that are funded. Some of them just get more attention than others

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#94

Post by intended » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:55 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?

Make a vocal, active, involved, interest group?

Hacker News, /. for Science?

Look - not everything is solved by collective action, nor everything solved by individual action.

Your strategy is determined by your terrain. The terrain here is a competitive field for human attention. Arecibo has nothing against dying puppies.

The beauty of the stars, the ambition of man? That has some scope.

But its still easier to find a few people who will regularly email and talk to your elected representatives, create networks that will work this out.

There MUST be some other people who want to contribute to this, and they may have resources other than cash to pool.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#95

Post by skuhn » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

spiritplumber wrote: post #90

skuhn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a brief push by the government to encourage funding of things like Solyndra under Obama, but obviously that didn't all pan out. I think that putting substantial funding into making the US the world leader in climate change related technology is such an obvious slam dunk that it defies belief for me that there seems to be no political will to do it. Argue about the reality of climate change if you must, but…

I was asked to do a bit of robotics consulting for Solyndra. I figured that it wasn't going to work out when the guy we talked to took us to a conference room that looked too nice, and admitted that he hadn't been on the production floor in the next building before me and my buddy asked to go check that out. We took the job anyway because it looked interesting, started doing the preliminaries, and when we went to get…

I think that Solyndra was specifically a terrible choice for the government to make an investment in, but it was exactly the type of industry they should generally be investing in.

But I guess at least Seagate got a nice building out of it.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#96

Post by CommieBobDole » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:01 PM UTC

kzrdude wrote: post #31

rjmunro wrote: post #23

Is this picture real? I don't get why there isn't any evidence of bits of cables still hanging from at least one of the towers or any other kind of wreckage. It looks more like someone has photoshopped all the cables out of of an old photo.

You can see that the top of each tower has come off, so none of them are standing as tall as they were. Still, sure, it looks like a serene picture apart from the dust in the air. Comparison before/after pic https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoJsJl0XUAI3XfT?format=jpg&name=...

You can also see that the building just to the right of the nearest tower is damaged, presumably due to cables or part of the tower landing on it.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#97

Post by mumblemumble » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:02 PM UTC

skuhn wrote: post #59

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…

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…

> So the F-35 makes jobs...

I wonder about that. It's been a while since I studied, but the phrase "deadweight loss" looms large in what I remember of the one economics class I took in college. So I wouldn't be surprised if the program is actually a net negative for job creation.

Only that doesn't matter, either, because the point is not to create more jobs; the point is to influence job creation in a way that benefits the people who hold the purse strings. If the cost of doing so outweighs the benefits, that's inconsequential. Those costs are so widely dispersed as to be invisible, immeasurable, and difficult to discuss except on theoretical grounds. They'll never be as compelling as a staged photograph of a senator in a suit and a hard hat, sticking a shovel in the ground.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#98

Post by colechristensen » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #79

colechristensen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One important piece of military preparedness is having a population of experienced engineers, manufacturing infrastructure, leadership, R&D, etc. Institutional knowledge is very real. Weapons programs also simply take decades. You might be able to churn out web apps in a few months, but cutting edge aircraft, not so much. What do we have? Unprecedented world peace. Why do we have it? American foreign policy. You have…

I would sooner credit the 35th rule of acquisition ("Peace is good for business") than American foreign policy for the lack of a global conflict.

But then what changed between 1900 and 1945? We had two world wars between those years and nothing but small localized wars never between major powers after?

Weapons. We developed weapons that could sanitize the planet, and in the case that someone might challenge our intention to actually use them, we developed weapons that ran the spectrum so that war against us would always seem a major losing proposition. The only thing left is insurgency and proxy wars, always carefully enough to not trigger major action.

Given that game becoming economically codependent and the world is the best play for the available game, and then indeed “peace is good for business”.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#99

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:08 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…

>> the political incentives need to be fundamentally re-aligned.

Being the first president to announce the detection of an extraterrestrial intelligence would be a big deal. Clinton certainly jumped on the mic pretty fast when we thought life had been found on mars. Such possibilities could provide the political motivation to keep the next giant telescope funded.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#100

Post by z2 » Tue, Dec 01, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

dmurray wrote: post #41

bipson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a matter of incompetence. They even had auxiliary cables installed some time ago, one of these was the first to fail. All well-known best practices don't matter if structures cannot be maintained because the governing bodies deny the necessary funding for maintenance/repairs/operation. In a sense Arecibo was knowingly "given up".

Well, there was a bit of incompetence. The auxiliary cable was almost certainly installed incorrectly and the failure mode that occurred (cable slipped out of its socket) would not have happened if best practices were followed. But it was installed on the cheap: if they'd had more money they would likely have paid for more diligent engineers. After all, they built it pretty well the first time round. So at some level…

Not to defend incompetence, but could the design have made it a bit unwieldy with the 900 (US) ton receiver housing the array of focusing lenses/mirrors? Is it common enough to suspend something that massive from so few points?

The only comparison I know is the FAST which opted to actively deform the dish itself for focusing rather than suspend such a heavy receiver.