Earlier quoted context omitted.
And the US is planning to purchase 2500 of those. Because 2400 are clearly not enough.
The defense budget is tiny compared to the US's welfare state programs.
The defense budget IS a welfare program.
Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
251–260 of 315 posts
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 now that it's 60 years after its original design, what kind of design is going to replace it? Do we even need giant monolith dishes anymore? China already built one: https://phys.org/news/2016-07-china-world-largest-radio-tele... . Given that it's nonmilitary US government infrastr…
It seems like we should be able to build these things in space.
We can. They would be vastly more expensive than the telescopes we're building on earth, and uneconomical to fix or upgrade.
One day we'll have synthetic aperture radiotelescope swarms in space. For now, it's a better use of money to improve our earth-based systems first.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#253Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Constant painting is also a sign of efficiency. Rather than a large number of people painting it for a small period of time, which requires a startup and close down overhead; they have instead resourced it so that they can keep a small number of people employed permenantly who accumulate expertise and minimise the mobilisations costs.
Agreed, but it is still more expensive in terms of direct costs than ‘do nothing’ which seems to be the case for the telescope. Whoever downvoted me, thanks a bunch. Not sure why. Running a team of painters still costs more than nothing. The cost of painting doesn’t cover the cost of ongoing inspections for metal fatigue etc etc. Engineering reviews, government oversight and so on. Large bridges, especially with vehi…
Telescopes are not typically "do nothing. I am not aware of the details of Arecibo, but the big telescope in Greenbank has a paint crew work for 8 hours a day for multiple weeks each summer. And after several years the entire telescope is repainted and they start all over from the beginning. During the day time hours when the paint crew the is working the telescope can not be moved to point at objects, but is still taking data in the form of drift scans, recording whatever passes through the field of view of the telescope. A whole bunch of pulsars has been found that way.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#255I'm lucky to have had a chance to visit this thing. It was cyberpunk AF. A huge telescope in the jungle.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There was a time when those ideas weren't so dominant, 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…
> 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. I think the problem is in the way things are handled vs the regulations themselves. I believe there very much should be legal standards and licensing processes for building residential and business structures. I also think that getting things inspected and approved should be a really ea…
> "The free market shall decide" and "let the buyer beware" are great until you eat a sandwich and find out the ground beef was cut with sawdust, or buy a house with a deck, have a party, and the deck collapses because the previous owner built it wrong.
Or have pay for expensive destructive inspections of every house you intend to buy (as part of your due diligence), because you can assume literally nothing about it. The current regime of building codes and inspections is far more efficient than that (e.g. make sure the inspection happens before covering stuff up).
"Let the buyer beware" doesn't necessary cut down on hassle, it just moves it around and in many cases makes it more onerous.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#257Earlier 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…
Do you have a list or link to any mega projects you are currently excited about?
Three that sound pretty exciting to me are ITER [1], the Extremely Large Telescope [2] and the James Webb Space Telescope. I'm sure there is also more I haven't heard of yet!
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#258This is the kind of thing I always hope that one of the billionaire nerds will help with. Seems right up Elon Musk's alley.
This is multigenerational national infrastructure. Imagine a volatile nerd like Musk funding Goldstone or CERN. He'll get into a pissing match with someone who knows what he is talking about damn quick (remember the Thai U-boat story) and then refuse to pay further.
He'll get into a pissing match with someone who knows what he is talking about damn quick
You're being grossly uncharitable considering what he's already been able to accomplish at SpaceX. The thing about Musk is that when even 5% of his hype comes to fruition, substantial positive change follows. Can you say the same about your employer, or about yourself?
Yes, in many respects he behaves like a stereotypical rich eccentric whackjob, somebody who will probably end up in Howard Hughes's old hotel suite surrounded by bottles of his own urine. It sucks that any defense of Musk inevitably has to be framed with a disclaimer like that. But like Hughes, he gets important shit done when nobody else is even willing to try, and he isn't afraid to place long bets on long shots.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#259The 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…
Not a radioastronomer, but it seems like it'd be nice to add a dish the back of (some of the) Starlink satellites. To make an even larger array.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. What about the Eiffel Tower? Or Blackpool Tower. That proves it can be done.
Those are both made of iron.
Steel is iron, with a carbon content somewhere in the range of about 0.25% to 2%.