71–80 of 315 posts
So, after all that I got to see a fence with a closed sign.
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.
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.
This is truly sad news. How did it come to this? Was proper upkeep and maintenance over the years deemed too expensive? After all, everything decays over time when left alone.
Maybe a good car analogy would be if somebody ran a red light and smashed into your car. You may have been a bit behind on your car maintenance, but it was the crash that destroyed your car.
This 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.
This is the kind of thing I always hope that one of the billionaire nerds will help with. Seems right up Elon Musk's alley.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's a reflection of the state of US infrastructure.
It's a reflection of the damage caused by a Category 5 hurricane, and subsequent tropical storm.
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. 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…
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, and that's when the US built many of its nice things that we still celebrate today.
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…