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Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

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Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#71

Post by the8472 »

Arubis wrote: post #46
ISL wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FTE employee-count alone underestimates the impact of national-scale science infrastructure. naic.edu is down right now (I suspect they're busy at the moment), but their data is used by tens to hundreds of institutions, each partially employing faculty, postdocs, and students. For agencies like NSF, the science is sometimes almost secondary. What matters perhaps the most is that qualified and capable students con…

Yours is a convincing argument. How do we get better optics on this for the public at large, so as to better present arguments for funding science?

If it works for defense projects... Calculate how many jobs it takes to build a thing. Keep building things. Advertise job numbers?

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#72

Post by javajosh »

ethbr0 wrote: post #65
javajosh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The first answer is ICBMs are, now a days, mostly an IR optical thing. Source? This seems unlikely since ground-based visual tracking would be obscured by e.g. clouds. Is ICBM tracking all space-based and visual? (I can see why IR is useful to detect the initial boost, but it would also seem rather useless to track a small, passive object in freefall).

> small, passive object in freefall That's probably anomalously hot as it plows back through the atmosphere. I think radar stealth coatings are sufficiently advanced that they swung the balance back in favor of IR for tracking purposes. Historically: it was hard / unknown how to make a flying object that resisted reflecting radar Current: it's hard / unknown how to make a flying object that's resistant to radiating h…

>as it plows back through the atmosphere.

I would assume that if you're tracking it on re-entry that's a little too late.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#73

Post by colechristensen »

bmurphy1976 wrote: post #45
skuhn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockheed and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. That a fighter plane may or may not come out the other end is only nominally important, the key is to spend the money. The mo…

> The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockhead and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. I agree with this. I've been saying for years that our military programs are giant socialist jobs programs in disguise (tha…

One important piece of military preparedness is having a population of experienced engineers, manufacturing infrastructure, leadership, R&D, etc. Institutional knowledge is very real. Weapons programs also simply take decades. You might be able to churn out web apps in a few months, but cutting edge aircraft, not so much.

What do we have? Unprecedented world peace. Why do we have it? American foreign policy.

You have to remember our military budget covers all of NATO in an intentional bid to reduce the military power of our allies which helps keep them peaceful.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#74

Post by lmilcin »

skuhn wrote: post #38
m000 wrote: post #16

"Too big to fail" apparently doesn't apply for science projects. To put this in perspective, at the cost of a single F-35A, Arecibo could be running for ~7y with funding at 2011 levels.

The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockheed and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. That a fighter plane may or may not come out the other end is only nominally important, the key is to spend the money. The mo…

You do realize the money spent on these projects comes out of pockets of all taxpayers?

So we are really talking about wealth transfer from all taxpayers to some taxpayers who are usually doing well already plus huge losses on the way.

Obviously, there is a bunch of technology being developed that benefits US but let us not kid ourselves, it is not the most cost effective way of doing research.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#75

Post by Frondo »

skuhn wrote: post #62
wavefunction wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's high time for Puerto Rico to become a US state. Puerto Rico has twice the population of the two Dakotas combined and the only way they'll receive more-equitable treatment is if they become a state. I think the will is there locally but there has been resistance from established political factions in the US who fear a place that might tip the balance of power one way or the other.

I agree with you, and I'll go a step further. The US should not have any colonial territories or federal districts where US citizens live who have second-class rights compared to citizens of the 50 states. That means DC, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa (collectively 3.8 million US citizens) should all be made states. There are undoubtedly lots of issues and h…

I'll go even further: find a way to grant them all the rights of citizenship (representation for their taxation) and let them decide for themselves on statehood. If there's any downside (I honestly don't know, maybe there is?), those people should be given the choice to determine their course of action for themselves.

But I agree completely, having people who pay taxes and can't access all the machinery of government they fund is criminal. (This also includes disenfranchised felons, but especially disenfranchised ex-felons.)

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#76

Post by olsonjeffery »

dmurray wrote: post #41
bipson wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a matter of incompetence. They even had auxiliary cables installed some time ago, one of these was the first to fail. All well-known best practices don't matter if structures cannot be maintained because the governing bodies deny the necessary funding for maintenance/repairs/operation. In a sense Arecibo was knowingly "given up".

Well, there was a bit of incompetence. The auxiliary cable was almost certainly installed incorrectly and the failure mode that occurred (cable slipped out of its socket) would not have happened if best practices were followed. But it was installed on the cheap: if they'd had more money they would likely have paid for more diligent engineers. After all, they built it pretty well the first time round. So at some level…

>Well, there was a bit of incompetence.

Where? What evidence do you have for such a claim?

>The auxiliary cable was almost certainly installed incorrectly

Are you almost certain? How do you know? What stopped you from being completely certain?

>and the failure mode that occurred (cable slipped out of its socket) would not have happened if best practices were followed.

Are you a radio observatory specialist? Please share! Looking at your submission and comment history, you don't appear to have any special expertise at all. Curious where your very specific and definite pronouncements arise from.

>But it was installed on the cheap

Again: What's your evidence for this claim? And inferring this from historical under-funding isn't a satisfactory answer.

>So at some level, yeah, the root cause is a lack of funds.

Kind of strange to make all of those claims above and then come out and just plainly state this at the conclusion.

You've made lots of claims and I think you're just talking out of your ass. If that's the case, your comments are shameful and inappropriate.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#77

Post by thspimpolds »

delecti wrote: post #53

To clarify, "has collapsed" or "was collapsed"? I had heard they were planning to actively decommission it out of concerns for safety, and I don't trust that level of nuance from the auto-translate.

the NSF confirmed the cables failed sometime over night, this wasn't the planned decommissioning. They noticed with drone flights the cable exteriors which remained on tower 4 were showing pre-failure conditions over the past few days.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#78

Post by colechristensen »

gadders wrote: post #52
m000 wrote: post #16

"Too big to fail" apparently doesn't apply for science projects. To put this in perspective, at the cost of a single F-35A, Arecibo could be running for ~7y with funding at 2011 levels.

Why did it fail? Was it a lack of ongoing maintenance?

Ultimately, it was old. It wasn’t designed to handle the stresses it experienced, and important things failed.

It is possible but far from certain that inspections could have found and fixed cable problems before ultimate failure.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#79

Post by Frondo »

colechristensen wrote: post #73
bmurphy1976 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockhead and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. I agree with this. I've been saying for years that our military programs are giant socialist jobs programs in disguise (tha…

One important piece of military preparedness is having a population of experienced engineers, manufacturing infrastructure, leadership, R&D, etc. Institutional knowledge is very real. Weapons programs also simply take decades. You might be able to churn out web apps in a few months, but cutting edge aircraft, not so much. What do we have? Unprecedented world peace. Why do we have it? American foreign policy. You have…

I would sooner credit the 35th rule of acquisition ("Peace is good for business") than American foreign policy for the lack of a global conflict.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#80

Post by snakeboy »

lmilcin wrote: post #74
skuhn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockheed and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. That a fighter plane may or may not come out the other end is only nominally important, the key is to spend the money. The mo…

You do realize the money spent on these projects comes out of pockets of all taxpayers? So we are really talking about wealth transfer from all taxpayers to some taxpayers who are usually doing well already plus huge losses on the way. Obviously, there is a bunch of technology being developed that benefits US but let us not kid ourselves, it is not the most cost effective way of doing research.

I don't think the OP was at all suggesting that it's a good system. They were just explaining the current incentive structure.
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