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Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

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Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#321

Post by JohnBooty »

dheera wrote: post #229
petschge wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cables were (originally) redundant. There are actually replacement cables on the way from Germany right now. But after the one main cable failed earlier this year they noticed that all cables are MUCH weaker than previously thought. So there was (even before the collapse) no way of replacing the existing cables with the replacements. And yes that probably implies that they should have swapped out all cables years…

> no way of replacing How did they build the cables in the first place? Couldn't they just snip the cables with a helicopter or unmanned drone with a flying chopsaw and string new ones as if it was a brand new construction? Basically I'm not understanding how it is impossible to replace something but it is evidently possible to build that something.

    Basically I'm not understanding how it is 
    impossible to replace something but it is 
    evidently possible to build that something.
Ah, you are fortunate. I see you've never worked on a large software project with lots of technical debt. =)

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#322

Post by dheera »

paledot wrote: post #239
dheera wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no way of replacing How did they build the cables in the first place? Couldn't they just snip the cables with a helicopter or unmanned drone with a flying chopsaw and string new ones as if it was a brand new construction? Basically I'm not understanding how it is impossible to replace something but it is evidently possible to build that something.

The dish is nothing but aluminum sheeting with holes in it. The vast majority of the cost and complexity are in the instrument cluster and the towers. There's not much of value left to repair at this point. As for replacing cables, anyone who has rebuilt a RAID array will tell you that hardware is most likely to fail when it's under stress, like when you have workers in the towers setting the footings for the new ult…

Why would there workers in the towers?

I assumed that in 2020 we have unmanned solutions to taking something down, and then rebuilding would be done with proper engineering as if it were a new radio telescope but the dish is already built for you.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#323

Post by nullc »

doctat wrote: post #252

The logical thing to do here is to simply rebuild it, right? I mean all the infrastructure is there. Power, networking, housing, staff, etc., etc. Like there couldn’t ever be a more convenient place to drop a similar type of instrument, right? And it seems that the towers are still up, surely the anchors for the cables are no worse for wear. The actual dish itself looks to be composed of a bunch of panels that are pr…

Unfortunately the skewed motivations of academia make rebuilding this instrument less attractive to scientists.

If you build a new and very different instrument you can churn out a lot of papers picking the long hanging fruit on the new instrument (just whatever you discover as soon as you turn it on), you can churn out a lot of papers about the technical challenges that come up in a new and different instrument.

A well understood, well established instrument type is more valuable for verifying results and discovering the things that take decades of consistent observations. ... but these don't generate many publications.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#324

Post by vkou »

dheera wrote: post #322
paledot wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dish is nothing but aluminum sheeting with holes in it. The vast majority of the cost and complexity are in the instrument cluster and the towers. There's not much of value left to repair at this point. As for replacing cables, anyone who has rebuilt a RAID array will tell you that hardware is most likely to fail when it's under stress, like when you have workers in the towers setting the footings for the new ult…

Why would there workers in the towers? I assumed that in 2020 we have unmanned solutions to taking something down, and then rebuilding would be done with proper engineering as if it were a new radio telescope but the dish is already built for you.

Your assumption is off by a few decades.

No robot currently exists that can replace even a tiny fraction of the tasks a 16 year old teenager with a hard-hat and steel toed boots can do at a construction site.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#325

Post by URSpider94 »

TMWNN wrote: post #130
VikingCoder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've begun imagining that for Defense spending, government money that's spent in a State must have come from that State's federal income taxes. I'm exhausted seeing data that indicates that states like mine put in more money than they get from the Federal government, and watching people from states that receive more than they put in talk about welfare state, wealth redistribution, etc.

No state pays a cent to another state or to the federal government. It is residents of each state that pay federal taxes, which the federal government in turn uses to provide funding and services to states and individuals. The Rockefeller Institute data ( https://rockinst.org/issue-areas/fiscal-analysis/balance-of-... ) shows that it's not so much "blue states" as frequently claimed, but taxpayers of four very wealth…

Note also that VA and MD are in this category for very different reasons than KY, AL and WV. Virginia and Maryland are extensions of the Washington, DC government complex (the Pentagon is in Virginia). A large portion of the Federal spending that goes to these states is direct expenditure (salaries, rents, purchasing) for goods and services, while for WV it's much more biased towards entitlement spending (social security, disability, Medicaid, Medicare).

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#326

Post by URSpider94 »

vxNsr wrote: post #127
lotsofpulp wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, they will official support it for cosmetic purposes of promoting “democracy”. In practice, however, they know it will cause them to lose power, so they won’t vote for it. Same reason Washington DC residents don’t have representation in the Senate. Or why the popular vote does not matter for the president.

Washington DC isn't a state because it was literally created to not be a state. If they want to give DC residents voting rights they should make it impossible to be a DC resident and instead anyone who lives within DC should vote as part of the state the land was taken from for federal elections. That solves everyone's problems (well aside from the democrats who are trying to get another 2 seats in the senate). Local…

Your proposed solution creates its own host of problems. Someone can't vote in a state unless they are residents of that state, subject to the laws and jurisdiction of that state. For example - what does it mean for DC residents to vote in, say, Virginia, for a Federal election. Who defines the Congressional districts? Do you pre-dictate to Virginia that it gets a Congressional district that matches the boundary of DC? What if that district has radically more or fewer residents than other districts in the state?

I'm seriously considering your proposal and not mocking it, but I don't think it's any more or less sensible, on its face, than creating a new "state". Note, I put "state" in quotes because I don't see why we can't dictate in that state constitution that the state is administered by Congress.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#327

Post by est31 »

betwixthewires wrote: post #311
est31 wrote: post #88

I've wondered about the exact time of the collapse. Apparently there is a seismic observatory only tens of meters away from the telescope dish. The station code is AOPR [0]. After retrieving the mseed data from the web API using curl, and installing obspy from pip, I could plot the events. This is the result: [1]. You can see two "events". One at Nov 30, 23:12 UTC, and a second, larger one at Dec 1st, 11:52 UTC. Upon…

Do you happen to know of some sources where I can find more API access to data and information like this? I'd love to be able to pull seismic data, weather data, ambient light data (as examples) or any other kind of data from all over the world just for fun.

The seismic data I downloaded using the FDSN web API. The link is on the page I linked in the "Data Access" section: https://www.fdsn.org/networks/detail/PR/

> FDSN Web Services provide a common data access API for seismic data.

For weather data, I found this page by googling:

https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api

Generally I think it's better to get it from commercial vendors, because a lot of weather stations/data are only available commercially.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#329

Post by splintercell »

VikingCoder wrote: post #320
splintercell wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that its unfair that money is being taken from you(r state) and being spent on people you don't believe deserve it?

I'm saying that I think there are programs that are good and beneficial, and others call them "evil, wealth redistribution." Well, if that's the majority view in a state, and that state also takes in more Federal dollars than its residents puts in, then maybe for Defense spending they shouldn't be able to take money from another state. They can self-fund it. And if they can't maybe it makes more sense that the jobs t…

Yeah but you don't get a say. Only all of us as a collective gets a say. That's in the fundamental nature of taxation.

My alcoholic racist uncle who beats his family receives welfare check for his disability. I am clearly paying into the system and he hates me extra for being an in interracial marriage. I don't like to have my money go towards him, but guess what?

Same here. You don't like that your money is being spent on people against your wishes? You just discovered the true nature of taxation.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#330

Post by vxNsr »

tt433 wrote: post #265
vxNsr wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you feel so smugly confidant in your hyper-condescending self-righteousness is similarly disappointing. Especially because I gave two real solutions that make a lot more sense and you dismissed them out of hand because they're "partisan", when they're absolutely the opposite. both my solutions make a lot more sense from an objective standpoint, because they preserve the due representation and one of the…

State creation has been partisan for much of this country's history for what it's worth. I find any excuse for not giving the district two senators and a representative (or more) to be unconscionable and based in partisan politics. You are welcome to argue otherwise.

Wait, so in your first comment you’re upset that I’m being partisan, and then here you’re saying it has to be partisan?

That’s quite the turn around.

You’ve also made some pretty bold claims without explanation. What makes you feel that it’s “unconscionable and based in partisan politics” to not give a single city two senators and instead follow the two options I proposed?

ETA: Your hypocrisy is brought into even starker relief with this comment. You’re like the people who were arguing for packing the courts (before the election) because it just makes sense (for whatever inane “nonpartisan” reason they could come up with), and then when asked “What if Trump wins?”, their face just drops...

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