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That the US (as of April 2020) does not take any part in.
So what.
The thing was iconic... even if not everyone watching/playing Goldeneye knew it was a real radio telescope, it was nevertheless one of those science megaprojects that featured prominently in the popular zeitgeist and got more than one young kid excited about what's out there in the stars. But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run. What comes next? Clearly there's going to be a capabilities gap for a while…
> But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run. Infrastructure can also be maintained and last longer than this, which is why I'm personally sad. Had Arecibo always had the ~60 year timeline, it would've been a bittersweet retirement, like Voyager. In this case I just feel like it's gone before it should. Arecibo has been receiving reduced funding since the early 2000s [1]. The end of an era, although thankf…
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No, it's a reflection of the state of US infrastructure.
Which is also a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century. Certainly the ability to focus it toward advancing the understanding of the natural world.
I don't think the human thirst for knowledge is lacking, but the political will, regardless of a project's economic profit, to support it is always in short supply. Much of the Cold War era funding for scientific ventures without a clear economic payoff was driven by the desire to beat the Soviets or approved on the basis that they would contribute to our Cold War defense complex. The Arecibo Observatory itself was borne out of a need to understand the ionosphere for the purposes of tracking nuclear warheads.
The Chinese are not approving these projects out of a love of science. They are doing what the US did 60 years ago: science as a means of national pride and prestige.
Is this a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century?
> Is this a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century? No, it's a symbol of the degradation of US political capability in the 21st century. To be more explicit: why build a telescope like this if you axiomatically believe the free market will do everything worth doing and that the government projects are waste by definition? There was a time when those ideas weren't so dominant, a…
That was also a time when three news networks controlled everything on TV. Print media had "journalistic integrity" (i.e. was buddy-buddy with existing institutions) so you never got to hear about it when the police kicked in a black guy's skull for no reason or when a construction project turned into a boondoggle handout for someone well connected. It was also a time with less government. People didn't have to put up with (as much) bureaucratic run around in order to build a deck on their house or to open a business.
The reason there's no faith in government these days is because there's people telling us how that sausage is made and we eat so much of it we're sick of it.
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> But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run. Infrastructure can also be maintained and last longer than this, which is why I'm personally sad. Had Arecibo always had the ~60 year timeline, it would've been a bittersweet retirement, like Voyager. In this case I just feel like it's gone before it should. Arecibo has been receiving reduced funding since the early 2000s [1]. The end of an era, although thankf…
Do you have a list or link to any mega projects you are currently excited about?
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Whose money are you volunteering to be spent on that?
I don’t get the flagging, it’s a very valid question. I’m sure the people at PR would rather see the money invested on infrastructure with higher impact on their citizens life.
I cannot believe they are shutting it down over a broken cable.
The thing was iconic... even if not everyone watching/playing Goldeneye knew it was a real radio telescope, it was nevertheless one of those science megaprojects that featured prominently in the popular zeitgeist and got more than one young kid excited about what's out there in the stars. But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run. What comes next? Clearly there's going to be a capabilities gap for a while…
FAST [0] can be considered an Arecibo replacement, see the comparison chapter on the wiki page. Though it is built in China, so some may say that it's not a replacement for the US and the West science community.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Sp...