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Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

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Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#171

Post by dredmorbius »

hammock wrote: post #139

That thing weighs 900 tons. Why is it so heavy?

It is, well, was, enormous.

The rectangular blocklike structure above the left side of the ring in this image is a roughly 8 ft x 8 ft x 20 ft (2.5m x 2.5m x 7m) shack. There might be a few humans in the frame though they're difficult to distinguish from equipment. The long structure descending off to the right is a gantry / catwalk.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Arecibo_...

To the right here:

https://www.ucf.edu/news/files/2018/02/ucf-arecibo-3.jpg

There are three people visible on the lower level here, directly below the stairs descending from the shack:

http://patriciadrichards.com/galleries/puertorico/arecibo-ob...

A construction photo. Behind the platform (upper left) is a bulldozer.

https://www.naic.edu/history_gal/jun151962.jpg

Full description:

http://naic.edu/ao/telescope-description

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#172

Post by khuey »

Natales wrote: post #162
admiralspoo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No doubt. But how many scientific tools also become cultural icons? in an era where we need more young people becoming passionate about science and space, the loss of Arecibo feels like the loss of the Challenger to many.

Should we really be allowing James Bond movies to choose where we spend our scientific resources? Just in the telescope domain the James Webb Space Telescope should finally launch next year and if it works will be an enormous step forwards.

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#173

Post by foolfoolz »

Natales wrote: post #162
admiralspoo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No doubt. But how many scientific tools also become cultural icons? in an era where we need more young people becoming passionate about science and space, the loss of Arecibo feels like the loss of the Challenger to many.

who?? if not for goldeneye no one would even know this thing existed

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#174

Post by jcranmer »

alacombe wrote: post #144
hammock wrote: post #139

That thing weighs 900 tons. Why is it so heavy?

Steel is pretty heavy... 1T is merely a 1m * 1m * 12.5cm slab.

To be fair, if you have a 12.5cm slab of steel, you're probably doing something wrong. Or trying to build battleship armor.

Steel beams will have a thickness of ~1cm steel at most, and steel plates will usually be much thinner.

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#175

Post by qayxc »

WesleyJohnson wrote: post #149
outworlder wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could build an entirely new one from scratch if we decided to manufacture one less F-35.

Is this accurate? That seems insane.

It's in the same ballpark.

The flyaway cost for domestic units of the F-35 are about $100M. [1]

The FAST radio telescope in China cost about $170M. [2]

While the Arecibo Telescope is significantly smaller, costs if rebuilt by US contractors would also be much higher than in China.

FAST can also only use about 300m of its 500m dish at a time due to limitations with focusing, so its effective size is closer to the Arecibo Telescope than its total size suggests.

So make that two F-35 and we're pretty much spot on and we'd have a budget for some 3-5 years of operation, too.

[1] https://f35.com/about/cost

[2] https://phys.org/news/2020-01-china-meter-fast-radio-telesco...

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#177

Post by AWildC182 »

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…

So many people commenting about Spacex and such but I feel they're missing the point. This marks the end of an era where publicly funded science was driving the frontiers of human knowledge faster than ever before.

We went from having never left the ground under power to the moon in 65 years.

65. Years.

And in the subsequent 51?

We've gotten really good at making cheap electronics and our consolation prize is a low cost-to-orbit with no concrete plans to do anything extraordinary with it. Cool.

This feels truly like the end of an empire.

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#178

Post by josefx »

WesleyJohnson wrote: post #149
outworlder wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could build an entirely new one from scratch if we decided to manufacture one less F-35.

Is this accurate? That seems insane.

Wikipedia seems to have the unit cost for a F-35 at a hundred million dollars.

While I cannot find a number on the construction cost it seems that just running the observatory originally cost around ten million a year. So even if one F-35 was enough to finance a rebuild you would have to drop in a second to keep it running for just a few years.

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#179

Post by [deleted] »

worker767424 wrote: post #80
solarkraft wrote: post #13

Wow. As tragic as the collapse is, at least it has been filmed (i thought it had not when I saw the announcement tweet with its far-away photo). If nothing else it's about as spectacular as I had expected. Had I been in the area I'd have been tempted to set up my camera somewhere close (remember that the risk of collapse was known to be high).

346 people dying in 737 MAX crashes is tragic. This is a 50-year-old telescope; the word I'd use is "unfortunate."

[deleted]

Re: Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse

#180

Post by acqq »

jessriedel wrote: post #128
modeless wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very similar event was depicted in Battlefield 4, surprisingly accurately as it turns out: https://youtu.be/KiOQdVvGdQE?t=38

Can anyone please characterize that accent/cadence to me?!? It reminds me very strongly of an accent I've been hearing on tech support telephone call frequently in the past 5 years but never recalled hearing before that. I have a pet theory that it's actually from a new technique for more rapidly teaching intelligible English pronunciation to folks learning it as a second language. But maybe it's just an accent from…

The author's twitter account: Location: "Amsterdam & Everywhere"

https://twitter.com/DANNYonPC

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