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Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

sciencemag.org

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Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

#191

Post by ardy42 »

AniseAbyss wrote: post #178
trboyden wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet government space travel is dead, and private space travel (SpaceX) is booming. So there's that. Just because it doesn't happen on your timeline doesn't mean private is inferior to government. It means private is waiting for it to be financially feasible. Which if the government did things that way, we wouldn't be $136 trillion dollars in debt.

Private space travel funded by government contracts.

> Private space travel funded by government contracts.

So, just like the 60s. Per Wikipedia:

The Apollo Command and Service Module was built by North American Aviation (now part of Boeing) and the Lunar Module by Grumman (now Northrop Grumman) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_(spacecraft)). The Saturn V was build by Boeing, North American, and Douglas (the latter two now part of Boeing) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V).

Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

#192

Post by ivalm »

AniseAbyss wrote: post #177
ivalm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admitting Puerto Rico as a state, thus enabling Puerto Rico to have representation in congress who could argue for more infra being built there, would likely be critical.

Unlikely, too much risk PR would be a blue state.

That’s why it will have to be when Dems have both Congress and the executive —- GA run-off is so critical. Since Puerto Rico already passed a referendum on joining the US as a state all it would take is simple majority.

Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

#193

Post by Gibbon1 »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #127
floatrock wrote: post #64

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…

Arecibo has been superseded in terms of raw aperture by FAST, and in terms of angular resolution by the interferometry arrays since 1966 at the latest when the One Mile observatory was doing 23 arcsecond resolution images. I think it's main somewhat unique capability was doing radar measurements of things in our solar system. My impressions is the neglect comes from having done all the useful things it could do ages…

Am I wrong but I remember something that it's resolution sucks because it's not parabolic.

Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

#194

Post by dgr582systems »

Retric wrote: post #99
aylmao wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It really depends on the structure. Giant steel objects are much harder to keep intact, to the point where non iconic objects are easier to replace once than maintain for 100+ years.

Like the (iconic) Sydney Harbour Bridge which requires continuous repainting. It’s very expensive to maintain.

https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/blogs/ag-blog/2013/1...

Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

#195

Post by Stratoscope »

kgin wrote: post #34

When I was 5 years old, I saw a pbs documentary about the Arecibo telescope. During a shot of a huge expanse of the telescope's metal, the narrator said something to the effect of "as one gets closer to the equator the sun's rays are stronger and the metal becomes too hot to touch". This, combined with the fact that I had a globe with a raised ridge around the equator, caused me to assume (for many years) that the eq…

That's a neat story! Here's mine from when I was about that same age.

Grownups knew I was interested in science and physics. Sometimes they would ask me to explain what E = mc² means, and I had a ready answer:

"When you accelerate matter to the speed of light squared, it turns into energy!"

Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

#196

Post by bobthepanda »

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #163
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's location is still surely ideal. But it's clear the construction that's there isn't safe. I wonder if, provided they're able to dismantle the remaining facility without complete collapse, if it'd be reasonable to "rebuild" on the same site. It sounds like the towers should be rebuilt, all of the cables replaced, etc. And obviously the dish at minimum needs repair . I can't imagine anything would be salvag…

Is it an ideal location though? From an astrophysics perspective I bet it's ideal, but from a structural perspective it's still a large steel structure in the tropics that's also simultaneously in both a hurricane and earthquake zone, which to me seems closer to a worst case scenario than a perfect spot to build. Ignoring geopolitical matters I wonder if an installation on the same latitude in the mexican mountains w…

I mean the geopolitical status of Puerto Rico is not necessarily better, given that even today PR has terrible power infrastructure and no clear plan to fix it.

Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

#197

Post by xyzzyz »

1MoreThing wrote: post #162
xyzzyz wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After all, why spend money on a telescope when the government can cut the budget to lower taxes a little bit more? The NSF budget had been steadily growing in real terms, and is now over 3 times larger than in early 80s (8 times in nominal terms). If Arecibo has not been getting enough money to maintain it, and if there is no plan for new telescope in its budget, it’s not because of “budget cuts”, but rather becaus…

Is it productivity, or is the work to mine new "knowledge coins" just harder now that we've done some of the easier work?

By falling productivity, I simply mean that the same amount of funding results in fewer, less valuable and less useful results. Whether it’s caused by research itself becoming progressively more difficult, or some kind of fundamental dysfunction within science, I cannot accurately determine: I think it’s both at least to some degree. I think it’s reasonable to expect that keeping pace of results requires growth in spending, in general.

Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

#198

Post by jonathankoren »

AniseAbyss wrote: post #173
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't nonmilitary, it's military use has just come to an end. In a small sidenote of an absolutely magnificent lecture by Steve Blank, the Secret History of Silicon Valley [0], he notes that the reason the radio telescopes were built in the 60's was because the Soviets were using air defense radars in their interiors that were hard to get information on using other methods that were available, but a few times a m…

Basically everything that has to do with space is tied into the military. I'm sure the Chinese aren't going to the moon just for science.

Same reason the Americans and the Soviets did: national pride.

Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled

#199

Post by bobthepanda »

pinewurst wrote: post #36
HarryHirsch wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 1950s the US Government built a lot of space infrastructure in the South (Stennis, Redstone &c) to develop the backwards corners of the nation. There's no political will for that any longer, it seems.

That was far more an artifact of the seniority of certain Southern senators on appropriations committees than any commitment to regional improvement. That seniority was a byproduct of (a) horribly racist voting practices keeping those seats long term in the same hands and (b) no competition.

It's kind of crazy how the elimination of pork-barrel stipulations ended up polarizing politics.
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