Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse • Hacker News Board

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#151

Post by sho_hn » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:08 PM UTC

cal5k wrote: post #135

areoform wrote: post #126

It feels like the death of American ingenuity. We've fallen from the era where we sent echoes to our neighbours and the stars. When we found clearings in jungles and turned them into monuments to humanity. The time when we put our best foot forward and reached ahead, into the future, racing towards a brighter tomorrow for humanity. I mourn for what has been lost. The American century wasn't punctuated by a war, but b…

You're joking, right? 2020 is a year where SpaceX flew humans to space for the first time ever on a commercial vehicle, we created and started to distribute a vaccine for a never-before-seen virus in under a year, and we began to hook rural people who've never had access to high-quality internet up via a constellation of thousands of micro-satellites in LEO. Sure, not everything is rosy, but we're still capable of so…

Technology-wise, the vaccine you mean was developed in Germany by a German company. Pfizer is the manufacturing partner and did logistics for clinical trials (except in China, where Fosun licensed it).

$445 million in funding came as a grant from the German government, the rest from licensors. The German government has split another ~300 million or so on two other companies also working on vaccines. The US government did not contribute any funding to Pfizer's license.

I'd rather say it's a cool example of international collab and winning together than an American exceptionalism narrative ...

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#152

Post by valuearb » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

areoform wrote: post #126

It feels like the death of American ingenuity. We've fallen from the era where we sent echoes to our neighbours and the stars. When we found clearings in jungles and turned them into monuments to humanity. The time when we put our best foot forward and reached ahead, into the future, racing towards a brighter tomorrow for humanity. I mourn for what has been lost. The American century wasn't punctuated by a war, but b…

This is your take on the day before SpaceX attempts to fly the worlds first fully reusable spacecraft to 15 km and land it? That if successful will put larger payloads into space at less than one hundredth the cost of the Space Shuttle, and enable manned deep space missions to Mars and beyond?

Just weeks after Apple unveiled the worlds fastest CPU core running on only 15 watts (with credit to a Brit architecture)?

If you look at the world through a filtered lens, of course you only see what you want to see.

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#153

Post by overcast » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:13 PM UTC

So many hours logged on that map in Battlefield 4 <3

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#154

Post by valuearb » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

petschge wrote: post #52

spenczar5 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at UW astronomy. It’s mostly symbolic. The main capability loss is that Arecibo was able to transmit, which is unique at its size. As an example, that was useful to rescue the ISEE-3 explorer when it passed through a comet trail in the 1980s. Only Arecibo was powerful enough to blast a radio message through the comet trail. (PDF reference: https://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-84/84T.PDF ) Arecibo was…

There was still way more requests for observing time and the total amount of time available in the last cycles. Also there is a lot of value to have long-term datasets that are recorded with the same instruments as it removes a lot of systematics. Nanograph is being badly bitten by that, as they use pulsar timing data over 10 or 12 years. (And were likely only 1 or 2 years away from results, which may now be delayed…

Are requests a valid measurement of value? Why didn't the astronomer community band together to save it?

They've funded a good number of very expensive telescopes the last 20 years, the fact they didn't fund refurbishment here sees to tell a great deal about its actual value over building new radio telescopes.

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#155

Post by admiralspoo » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:15 PM UTC

areoform wrote: post #126

It feels like the death of American ingenuity. We've fallen from the era where we sent echoes to our neighbours and the stars. When we found clearings in jungles and turned them into monuments to humanity. The time when we put our best foot forward and reached ahead, into the future, racing towards a brighter tomorrow for humanity. I mourn for what has been lost. The American century wasn't punctuated by a war, but b…

Uh, no. Arecibo was quite a low priority for the NSF/NASA for good reasons -- there are other, better, telescopes and facilities to fund.

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#156

Post by valuearb » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #105

And every time I see it, my heart aches for the science. RIP Arecibo, you did not deserve this fate.

Why not? Should we pour money into antiquated and inefficient designs at the expense of newer designs that will be far more effective?

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#157

Post by emmelaich » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

woeirua wrote: post #11

Is the loss of Arecibo a big blow to the scientific community? I was of the impression that Arecibo was long past it's heyday and in general that large arrays of smaller receivers were now considered superior.

> arrays ...

e.g. Notionally 16km 'wide' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_Large_Millimeter_Array

Or 6km https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Square_Kilometre_Ar...

and future the ~3000km (and total collection area of 1km^2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#158

Post by magicalhippo » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

RedOrGreen wrote: post #81

woeirua wrote: post #11

Is the loss of Arecibo a big blow to the scientific community? I was of the impression that Arecibo was long past it's heyday and in general that large arrays of smaller receivers were now considered superior.

Allow me to gently contradict the previous responders. The community of radio astronomers is feeling the loss of Arecibo very keenly. I've mentioned this in a previous comment [1] so I won't rehash it again, but here [2] is a statement from the NANOGrav collaboration - we have been using the Arecibo telescope on a weekly basis (along with the Green Bank telescope) to observe a large number of radio pulsars for over 1…

I mentioned NANOGrav earlier[1] as well. After 15 years they were about to really drive down the noise for each additional year of data.

They were worried about a 6 month delay, as it would seriously hurt their dataset. I assume they're devastated by the complete loss.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25046378

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#159

Post by neves » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #152

areoform wrote: post #126

It feels like the death of American ingenuity. We've fallen from the era where we sent echoes to our neighbours and the stars. When we found clearings in jungles and turned them into monuments to humanity. The time when we put our best foot forward and reached ahead, into the future, racing towards a brighter tomorrow for humanity. I mourn for what has been lost. The American century wasn't punctuated by a war, but b…

This is your take on the day before SpaceX attempts to fly the worlds first fully reusable spacecraft to 15 km and land it? That if successful will put larger payloads into space at less than one hundredth the cost of the Space Shuttle, and enable manned deep space missions to Mars and beyond? Just weeks after Apple unveiled the worlds fastest CPU core running on only 15 watts (with credit to a Brit architecture)? If…

Maybe his take is after the USA didn't manage to contain an epidemic, used its power to steal medical equipment from other countries, developed a marvelous vaccine that will sell at a high price for other countries after vaccinating itself.

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#160

Post by macksd » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 10:21 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #59

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"now" is doing a lot of work here... If I'm not mistaken, we have about a millennium or a hundred make arrangements.

the lack of interest in funding Arecibo at a level to even do maintenance to prevent this from happening suggests we won't bother within that millennium you are allowing.

Would normal maintenance have prevented this? My understanding from the initial reports is that they were unable to identify any flaw or anomaly in the steel cable that snapped that would have indicated the problem ahead of time, and that it simply wasn't designed to tolerate a failure of that nature. Sounds like a freak accident to me.