[HN Gopher] Arecibo telescope won't be rebuilt
___________________________________________________________________
Arecibo telescope won't be rebuilt
Author : pseudolus
Score : 241 points
Date : 2022-10-17 11:58 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| The cost to rebuild from scratch would be trivial for the
| combined endowments of America's top universities, who are surely
| the primary users
|
| Harvard alone has tens of billions in its endowment.
|
| ...and yet, comments here are talking about crowdfunding??
| [deleted]
| jmbwell wrote:
| Crowdfunding comes up whenever those with resources are
| indifferent to those with need.
| ianai wrote:
| People probably just don't default think of universities. But
| yes universities have a history of funding stuff exactly like
| this. And it absolutely fits into their operant model.
|
| Maybe the way for us normies to push for this is to donate to
| our alma maters and write letters/emails to alumni associations
| and administrations to propose joint funding of this across
| multiple schools.
| toyg wrote:
| _> the way for us normies to push for this is to donate to
| our alma maters_
|
| Unless you put explicit conditions on your donation, chances
| are you're just going to fund the next round of salary
| increases for university administrators.
| hedora wrote:
| Even with explicit conditions, they often just shuffle
| other money around under the table.
|
| "This $100 must be spent on science" => "route $100 of the
| general fund away from science"
| marcinzm wrote:
| The general point of endowments is to support the university
| perpetually off the interest and not to spend it directly. For
| example, Stanford's $30 billion endowment returns $1.3billion
| per year but that only covers 21% of the universities operating
| costs.
| ckemere wrote:
| This comment reveals a misunderstanding about how university
| research works. Individual professors are responsible for
| raising money from the government or private philanthropists to
| pay for research. University endowments are sometimes used for
| seed investments, but the vast majority of endowment investment
| into "research" is paying the professor salaries. Note that in
| most fields the grant-funded graduate students, postdocs, or
| research scientists are the ones who do the work. In this
| respect, one could compare university professors to startup-
| founders, with the return on the universities (meager)
| investment being indirect returns (the 50% administrative fee
| that is charged on grants) and fame to the university.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| jl6 wrote:
| Arecibo Memorial Skate Park.
| ck2 wrote:
| How about use all funds to build an interferometer to James Webb?
|
| Plausible? Would be most advanced imaging ever made?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| This is probably a plot by some villain to make everyone think
| that the facility is abandoned. Once everyone withdraws from the
| area, it'll be used as a lair, from which the villain will direct
| the execution of his sinister plans.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| If you want a government built lair, former icbm silos
| sometimes pop up on zillow
| tjpnz wrote:
| I believe that was the plot of Goldeneye.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| The most sinister thing about this plot is using a radio
| telescope to control a satellite orbiting in LEO, wasting the
| poor engineers' time.
|
| (Boris was lucky to be frozen in liquid nitrogen, consider it
| a mercy kill.)
| throw827474737 wrote:
| No, you are wrong - GP wouldn't have said so if that would
| have been the case already..
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Can we get another Bond film to fund rebuilding it?
| amlib wrote:
| Nowadays all you are gonna get is a fancy CGI
| reconstruction of the telescope...
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah, for it to work, we'd need to get Bezos to spend
| $700M+ on an Expanse reboot.
|
| (After a few seasons, the set will pay for itself!)
| rob74 wrote:
| That's a better plan than what the US government announced for
| it. An "educational centre for science, technology, engineering
| and maths (STEM)"? In the mountains of Puerto Rico, miles away
| from larger populated areas? I mean, while there was a
| telescope there, that actually made sense, but now that it's
| gone?
| j0hnyl wrote:
| I got to visit this place a couple of years before it collapsed.
| It was one of the coolest most cyberpunk things I've ever seen in
| real life.
| pseudolus wrote:
| Also featured as the centerpiece of a James Bond Movie
| (Goldeneye):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vovVkvQhYEE&ab_channel=ostin...
| thinkcontext wrote:
| And Contact.
| ninjin wrote:
| As well as The X-Files [1], although apparently filmed in
| Vancouver - as with most of early X-Files...
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Green_Men_(The_X-
| Files)
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| What would the cost to rebuild be? Could it be crowd funded?
| WJW wrote:
| Some quick googling reveals that it cost 9.3 million in 1963,
| so inflation adjusted that would be about 100 million today.
| Not completely out of the realm of crowdfunding, but it would
| probably quicker to send a tweet to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos and
| offer them to name it the "Jeff Bezos Arecibo Telescope" or
| somesuch if they fund the reconstruction by themselves.
| pavlov wrote:
| Show Elon the 1974 Arecibo message and explain that it's like
| an interstellar tweet, and for a mere $100 million he'll be
| able to send those himself.
|
| Honestly sounds like a bargain compared to his recent tweet
| spending habits.
| [deleted]
| closewith wrote:
| > Show Elon the 1974 Arecibo message and explain that it's
| like an interstellar tweet, and for a mere $100 million
| he'll be able to send those himself.
|
| Or just show him Goldeneye. I feel he'd be more likely to
| do it for the meme.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The cost disease for infrastructure has expanded dramatically
| faster than inflation and I really doubt you could do this
| for less than $2B today.
|
| Unless you get a magic "no environmental review" exception
| (you won't).
| lupire wrote:
| PR doesn't have the powerful NIMBY culture that California
| does.
|
| Folks there are less wealthy and more practical about the
| value of adding local economic investment.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| True overall, but it still only takes one Sierra Club to
| gum it up in court for years. It's not like the
| neighborhood can vote to override federal courts.
| elzbardico wrote:
| A lot of construction costs are also related to the
| insurance, specially against liabilities, financial costs
| and other, non-enviromental costs. Even if you're
| building a more amicable jurisdiction, those costs
| cascade down from your upstream supply chain.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I think that more than the reconstruction there probably
| isn't any will to pay for operations or maintenance anymore
| (after all, this probably wouldn't have happened in the first
| place if maintenance was better). So even if any billionaires
| decided to foot the bill, the issue would remain that a long
| term commitment to supporting the facility is also needed,
| and while short term large expenditures are tolerable to most
| rich companies and individuals, the long term commitment with
| no clear end or outcome is probably the limiter.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Chinese tax breaks, and no piss-breaks for the workers could
| help pay, too.
| greenbit wrote:
| Maybe with an offer to be top of the list of who gets
| notified when the aliens are first detected ..
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It's frustrating that isn't addressed in the article.
|
| Does Arecibo do more than other comparable telescopes? Or will
| science and humanity go on? Is it worth the billion, or $200m,
| or whatever, to rebuild in the name of science?
| shagie wrote:
| It can transmit and it has a larger surface area (collecting
| area) than other telescopes.
|
| Didymos has been in the news recently... https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/65803_Didymos#/media/File:Didy...
|
| Note the "Arecibo" in the file name.
|
| > Fourteen sequential Arecibo radar images of the near-Earth
| asteroid (65803) Didymos and its moonlet, taken on 23, 24 and
| 26 November 2003. NASA's planetary radar capabilities enable
| scientists to resolve shape, concavities, and possible large
| boulders on the surfaces of these small worlds. Photometric
| lightcurve data indicated that Didymos is a binary system,
| and radar imagery distinctly shows the secondary body.
|
| That was done with radio pulses sent from Arecibo.
|
| Science will go on, but we've lost a tool. The area of the
| dish remains unmatched.
|
| https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/48666/arecibo-
| adva...
| gpvos wrote:
| A similar, larger telescope[0] was put into service in China
| in 2016. There are a few things Arecibo could do that it
| can't (receiving frequencies above 3 GHz, transmitting), but
| in other areas it's better. So on the whole I can see how the
| need isn't that strong right now.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-
| meter_Aperture_Sp...
| lupire wrote:
| Pretty clearly not. It's natural advantage has faded over
| time as tech progressed.
|
| It's value would mainly be to show that we can afford to do
| some luxury science and local science, and be a focal point
| for Puerto Rico, which isn't necessarily bad.
|
| If PR had representation in Congress, Arecibo rebuild would
| be an easy pork barrel project.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| We have no other filled aperture radiotelescope of
| comparable area, with transmit capability. Filled aperture
| matters.
|
| The only comparable telescope is the Chinese FAST
| radiotelescope, which is somewhat larger in diameter but
| without all the capabilities (and, you know. Being in
| China.).
| krapht wrote:
| > Filled aperture matters.
|
| Could say the exact opposite... sparse synthetic
| apertures are more cost-efficient.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Totally depends on what you're trying to do. Arecibo was
| used in transmit mode, too, for studying asteroids, etc.
| and the "thinned array curse" hits you hard if you don't
| have a filled array for transmission as most of your
| energy ends up in sidelobes, not the central beam.
|
| Plus, sparse array only works well for high contrast,
| high brightness sources. And it has a bunch of artifacts
| that can get in the way of interpretation of the data.
| Plus just pure filled area matters a lot.
| yardstick wrote:
| Sell/auction off pieces from the original telescope and use
| that to help fund the replacement?
|
| Or somehow convince Elon to buy it...
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33232914
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| RobLach wrote:
| Good. Build something better.
| z3c0 wrote:
| Apparently Arecibo was the source for the cover art for Joy
| Division's _Unknown Pleasures_. Neat.
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/pop-culture-p...
| mosburger wrote:
| I've wanted to get the "Arecibo messsage" as a tattoo for a
| while now... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_message
| soneil wrote:
| Entirely unrelated, but I love that the actual album cover is a
| missing image on that article. They're talking about how iconic
| it is, and the image itself is the "broken image" icon - which
| is iconic in itself.
| rtanks wrote:
| Very sad for the Puerto Rican people. My husband has great
| memories there.
| zackmorris wrote:
| The US federal government should start a GoFundMe to pay the IOUs
| from all the times it raided discretionary spending on science,
| the arts and social security
| mikepavone wrote:
| Kind of a weird site for an educational facility. The Arecibo
| telescope was kind of in the middle of nowhere. That's a feature
| when picking a site for a radio-telescope, but not for education,
| especially when you don't have a cool-looking giant telescope to
| give people an excuse to make the trip
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Why rebuild it? While cutting-edge when it was originally built,
| my understanding is that computationally combined arrays of
| smaller dishes are today considered superior to what Arecibo was,
| for radio astronomy.
|
| I'd be interested to hear from folks with expertise whether that
| is right or wrong.
| rahen wrote:
| It was supposed to be rebuilt as a phased array of about a
| thousand 10m dishes mounted on a steerable plate about 300m
| wide. That would have been some colossal engineering.
|
| Have a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=518&v=2qiu86-ZZdU
| magnat wrote:
| It could transmit at 22 TW EIRP, a feature quite rare in
| smaller arrays.
| bdamm wrote:
| The unique capability is active radar. As far as I know,
| combined arrays of smaller dishes can't pulse out a radar beam,
| they can only sense via interferometry.
|
| Unless there have been some advances in large scale wave
| forming, a giant dish is the only way to beam out powerful
| radar.
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| Could a large-scale array not transmit in the same way a
| phased array would on, for example, a Starlink antenna?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array
| sigmoid10 wrote:
| The thing is, even by rebuilding Arecibo the US (or more
| specifically, the NSF) would no longer own the largest radio
| telescope. China's 500m telescope [1] is already operational
| and while there are some minor differences when it comes to
| frequency range and field of view, there isn't much to justify
| the expenditure for another telescope in the US beyond mere
| political indulgences. From a strictly science based point of
| view, a new Arecibo is very hard to sell considering the
| implied costs.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-
| meter_Aperture_Sp...
| shagie wrote:
| The 500m telescope lacks transmitters - this is an important
| distinction.
|
| > Fifth, Arecibo's larger secondary platform also housed
| several transmitters, making it one of only two instruments
| in the world capable of radar astronomy. ... The NASA-funded
| Planetary Radar System allowed Arecibo to study solid objects
| from Mercury to Saturn, and to perform very accurate orbit
| determination on near-earth objects, particularly potentially
| hazardous objects.
|
| China's 500m telescope wouldn't be able to capture
| https://www.planetary.org/space-images/radar-images-of-
| aster... because it can't send a pulse.
|
| https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010DPS....42.1317B/abstra.
| ..
|
| > We report Arecibo (2380 MHz, 13 cm) and Goldstone (8560
| MHz, 3.5 cm) delay-Doppler radar observations of binary near-
| Earth asteroid (NEA) 65803 Didymos (1996 GT) obtained on five
| dates between November 14-26, 2003 during the asteroid's
| approach within 0.048 AU.
|
| You'll note the Goldstone mention there and the "making it
| one of only two instruments in the world" from the wiki link
| on the 500 meter article
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy
|
| > There is one remaining radar astronomy facility in regular
| use, the Goldstone Solar System Radar.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Thanks for a substantive and well-sourced comment.
|
| There is a comment lower down saying Green Bank might add
| radar:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33233119
|
| I'm not in a position to confirm whether that is true
| though.
| shagie wrote:
| https://greenbankobservatory.org/future-of-earths-
| defense-is...
|
| > The National Science Foundation has awarded funds for
| the conceptual design of a higher-power radar system on
| the GBT - one that would be nearly 1,000 times more
| powerful than the proof of concept. In addition to a more
| powerful transmitter, NRAO and GBO, working with industry
| partners, will leverage new, solid-state amplifier and
| array receiving-system technologies to maximize the
| effectiveness of the new system. In parallel to this, as
| additional funding is allocated, the team plans to move
| to final design and construction activities, beginning in
| 2023.
|
| > The GBT's new radar capabilities will introduce a tool
| that astronomy has not had before, collecting data at
| higher resolutions and at wavelengths not previously
| available. NRAO and GBO also are developing advanced data
| reduction and analysis tools that have not been available
| before. The flexibility and increased performance of this
| new system will fill an important need for planetary
| defense, and also allow astronomers to observe asteroids,
| comets, planets and moons. The versatility of this system
| will contribute to many areas of science.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Does it seem like this would replace or improve upon what
| was lost at Arecibo?
| shagie wrote:
| From the page on the test -
| https://greenbankobservatory.org/successful-test-paves-
| way-f...
|
| > Using the information collected with this latest test,
| the participants will finalize a plan to develop a
| 500-kilowatt, high-power radar system that can image
| objects in the Solar System with unprecedented detail and
| sensitivity. The increased performance also will allow
| astronomers to use radar signals as far away as the
| orbits of Uranus and Neptune, increasing our
| understanding of the Solar System.
|
| > "The planned system will be a leap forward in radar
| science, allowing access to never before seen features of
| the Solar System from right here on Earth," said Karen
| O'Neil, the Green Bank Observatory site director.
|
| That use of the word "unprecedented" and looking at
| Uranus and Neptune suggests to me that it will go further
| than Arecibo did... three decades ago.
|
| https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000DDA....31.0803N/abs
| tra...
|
| > In October 1999 we obtained the first radar images of
| Saturn's rings, using the recently-upgraded Arecibo
| telescope operating at a wavelength of 12.6 cm. The
| opening angle of the rings was 19.9o, and dual-circular
| polarization data were collected over a period of 5 days.
| The resulting delay-Doppler maps have a range resolution
| of 100 msec and a frequency resolution of 2 kHz,
| corresponding to a spatial resolution cell of 15000 x
| 2000 km. Previous radar observations (e.g., Ostro et al.
| [1982] Icarus 49, 367) demonstrated the rings' high cross
| section and depolarization ratio, but did not yield
| 2-dimensional images.
|
| The key thing with this is the _radar_ astronomy rather
| than _radio_ astronomy.
|
| The tracking is likely what's at play for the Uranus and
| Neptune though.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Telescope
|
| > The round trip light time to objects beyond Saturn is
| longer than the 2.6-hour time that the telescope could
| track a celestial position, preventing radar observations
| of more distant objects.
|
| Uranus is about 2.5 light hours Neptune is about 4 light
| hours from us. Double that for the round trip time.
|
| The primary interesting part of this is getting the
| accurate ephemeris of near earth asteroids.
|
| https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/acm2008/pdf/8285.pdf
|
| > Arecibo Doppler measurements (2380-MHz, 12.6- cm) of
| asteroid 99942 Apophis, obtained in August 2005 and May
| 2006, have been combined with optical astrometry reported
| through August 2006 to produce a new orbit solution.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001910
| 352...
|
| > During these encounters the Arecibo and Goldstone radar
| stations collected seven Doppler and 22 delay
| measurements of Bennu. For a general description of radar
| astrometry see Yeomans et al., 1987, Ostro et al., 2002.
| This wealth of ground-based tracking data allows an
| extremely accurate description of Bennu's motion (Chesley
| et al., 2014). The trajectory of Bennu is deterministic
| until 2135, when a close encounter with Earth leads to
| strong scattering and makes the knowledge of its future
| motion statistical.
|
| ---
|
| So it looks like Green Bank will have improved
| transmitter and tracking. It won't have quite the
| sensitivity of Arecibo, but it's still one of the more
| impressive resources.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Thank you!
| [deleted]
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| How much does it cost?
|
| I see it was built for $9.3M in 1960.
|
| Now they're estimating the cleanup cost alone to be $50M.
|
| Inflation adjusted - it should cost ~$95M to re-build. I'm
| not sure how if you'd need to include the total $50M cleanup
| on top of that.
|
| Either way - if it can be re-built for $95M - that seems like
| a better deal than spending $50M to clean it up.
| jws wrote:
| There are 38,000 1mx2m perforated aluminum panels out
| there. I would pay a nice premium for them as a wall
| covering. Maybe not $50m/38000, but a good chunk of that.
| Having a section of the iconic telescope would be worth it.
| Now, are there thousands of people like me to make it work
| at scale?
| echelon wrote:
| $50M is a lot to spend for nothing. Can't the site just be
| fenced off (assuming it doesn't contaminate groundwater or
| endanger in-use facilities)?
|
| If a private developer wants to take it over and turn it
| into a tourist destination, let them spend their own money.
| Throw them some tax incentives, maybe.
|
| $95M would be a great deal to new science projects. India
| put an orbiter around Mars for less. We could start
| studying a distributed array approach to whatever comes
| after JWST.
| nullc wrote:
| The cost of cleanup (which includes restoring the forrest
| to its natural state) is really what kept it running for
| a long time-- basically within the budget horizon it was
| cheaper to keep it running at limp-along levels (which
| presumably contributed to the failure) than to shut it
| down.
|
| I've long assumed that complete restoration being an
| assumed mandatory consequence of shutdown was itself a
| successful gambit from parties that wanted to keep the
| instrument operational. :)
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Why does it need to be cleaned up?
|
| I thought telescope mirrors had to be absurdly pure.
|
| It seems like it would make for a super cool museum.
| haneefmubarak wrote:
| > I thought telescope mirrors had to be absurdly pure.
|
| It's a radio telescope, so think more along the lines of
| like a giant satellite dish. At the wavelength of the
| radio frequency signals, the tiny dust etc don't matter
| until they start to build up.
|
| > Why does it need to be cleaned up?
|
| The recent natural disaster(s?) in Puerto Rico damaged it
| massively, which given its sophistication and size likely
| means there's stuff strewn everywhere and facility
| damage. You don't generally want to leave government
| facilities to degrade to the extreme in disuse, so you
| still want to stabilize things to make it safe to
| traverse the area and be able to safely achieve the next
| goal of the facility and surrounding area.
| nullc wrote:
| Arecibo was a radio telescope, like a satellite dish. The
| 'mirror' is a great big metal mesh hemisphere covering 18
| acres of land in a mountain valley.
|
| It's not an ideal museum location in and of itself
| because it's almost an hour drive out of the city across
| some not-sutiable-for-high-traffic mountain roads (see
| the beginning of the movie Contact for a pretty
| reasonable view of what the trip out and in is like).
|
| Presumably the idea is that if we go around building
| stuff and just abandoning it we're doing unnecessary harm
| to nature as well as creating hazardous environments,
| e.g. when people go in to take the scrap metal and have
| stuff collapse on them.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is a big fiddly science instrument that requires
| constant maintenance, the benefit of cleanup is to get rid
| of that obligation. If we want to turn it into a museum or
| something, that might be worth considering. But that will
| require getting it into a safe state which is presumably
| lots of the cleanup cost.
| uplifter wrote:
| While combined arrays can have equivalent reception resolution,
| I don't believe they are equivalent for transmission. I recall
| reading in a Carl Sagan book that one Arecibo could transmit
| and receive messages from another Arecibo anywhere in the
| galaxy.
| [deleted]
| aardvarkr wrote:
| The main purpose was militaristic and science benefited as a
| result. Like others have said, the technology has advanced to
| the point where it didn't have much scientific value and we no
| longer need it to spy on the Russians so I highly doubt anyone
| is willing to pony up the billions just to have something cool
| and inspirational when it won't even be cutting edge anymore
| nullc wrote:
| > where it didn't have much scientific value
|
| EEEeeee.. don't confuse the weird biases in scientific
| research from publication incentives as being a true metric
| of scientific utility.
|
| There is a tremendous bias in favor of "new" instruments
| because the low hanging discoveries made possible on
| something new (not even necessarily 'better' just different)
| haven't been made yet. But much of that research is extremely
| superficial and doesn't go on to contribute much to the
| forward body of knowledge -- it just helps churn out papers
| to support career progression.
|
| Arecibo was thoroughly unmatched in several respects,
| particular as a radar[1]. It was also the premier instrument
| for validating observations made on synthetic aperture
| instruments since as a single aperture it's largely free of
| the artifacts that synthetic aperture instruments. Validation
| is scientifically critical but also doesn't tend to produce a
| lot of high profile papers.
|
| [1] E.g. consider these images of the moon imaged using
| Arecibo as the transmitter and Green Bank Telescope as the
| receiver https://sservi.nasa.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2014/05/craters2l...
| jjk166 wrote:
| Arecibo was never intended to spy on the Russians, nor is it
| capable of doing so - it's facing completely the wrong way.
|
| Arecibo did receive military funding, but that was because
| the military was interested in the behavior of the
| ionosphere. It was always a general science and technology
| development platform.
| nomel wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33234109
|
| Soviet tech allowed members, and equipment, to cross the
| borders of the country. ;)
| jjk166 wrote:
| Again, this doesn't stand up to scrutiny. To pick up
| radar transmissions reflected off the moon, the moon has
| to be in line of sight for both the emitter and detector.
| Puerto Rico is just about the worst positioned place in
| the US for something to have the moon in line of sight at
| the same time as the soviet union, and the particular
| design of Arecibo further limits the angles it can be
| directed at, so it can't even look towards the horizon
| where it might conceivably stand a chance. It's fine for
| a telescope as the rotation of the Earth allows it to
| look at different parts of the sky at different times,
| but there's a reason no radio receivers for terrestrial
| communication are built that way.
|
| Further, Arecibo works at frequencies of 10-40 MHz,
| substantially lower than even the lowest frequency
| radars. With secondary reflections you might be able to
| detect that a radar pulse had been detected, but
| determining where it came from or even what emitted it
| would be extremely challenging.
|
| I suppose perhaps Cuba could have been spied upon with
| it, but again it's just the worst design for the
| application.
| nomel wrote:
| If you have any insight into the (dis)credibility of
| Steve Blank's talk, I would suggest opening a discussion
| on the talk page, so it can be removed.
| hengheng wrote:
| Err, how was Arecibo able to spy on the Russians? Were there
| satellites going right over the dish?
| dwringer wrote:
| On Wikipedia is the claim "The telescope also originally
| had military intelligence uses, including locating Soviet
| radar installations by detecting their signals bouncing off
| the Moon."[0], which gives this[1](by name, but unlinked)
| as its source. It would be interesting to know more.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Telescope
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo
| arbalasquide wrote:
| It goes beyond being a state of the art tool. It is a part of
| our culture having this observatory.
|
| As a child, I loved going there and its the earliest part of my
| childhood that I remember something motivating me to pursue
| science/math. Even in my later part of my life I was able to do
| some research with the observatory which kick started my
| current career.
|
| The island already suffers from a lack of funding in education,
| thus I fear the youth might miss out on this sense of awe and
| curiosity I was lucky enough to have as a child.
|
| Another issue is that we have our brightest minds leaving the
| island because there's no fulfilling or well paying work to be
| done. The lack of this observatory is another reason more
| people will leave.
|
| Here's a white paper the people in the observatory wrote about
| a new dish. It contains reasoning, beyond my socio-cultural
| observations, for having a new one.
| http://www.naic.edu/NGAT/NGAT_WhitePaper_v2_01022021.pdf
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Funding for local projects is competitive at the federal
| level from what I understand. If it doesn't serve a primary
| scientific purpose, then why would Puerto Rico be put at the
| front of the line?
|
| i.e. there's 50 other states and D.C. competing to be the
| most attractive to big ticket project funding, which also
| deliver education, youth initiatives, high paying jobs, etc.
| nameless912 wrote:
| Because Puerto Rico is filled with American citizens who
| also deserve those things, and it's a vibrant island filled
| with scrappy, resilient people?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| More deserving then all 50 other states and D.C.?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| But you could ask this question of any state(+DC).
| Therefore we should not do anything.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Untrue. We'd simply spend federal funds into the best
| bang for the buck not accounting for population
| scrappiness.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Pick one and I'd be happy to ask if it's more deserving
| than all the rest.
| renewiltord wrote:
| JWST.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this US state. I'll remind you that
| we were taking about Puerto Rico being more or less
| deserving than other states(&DC).
| renewiltord wrote:
| No. _You_ were talking about that. _I_ was specifically
| saying that we aim for the best bang for the buck on
| scientific projects with local scrappiness not of
| relevance.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Correction: MichaelZuo set the topic and I followed. You
| seem to be wanting to discuss a different topic which can
| be done elsewhere.
| [deleted]
| mcguire wrote:
| So, Maryland.
| [deleted]
| hedora wrote:
| So, they should build something state-of-the-art there
| instead of what will effectively be a museum.
|
| (This would probably be a lot easier to get funded if
| Puerto Rico were a state...)
| avazhi wrote:
| Who deserve what, a gigantic concrete telescope from the
| 80s?
|
| Maybe look past your sentimentality and notice that if
| money in Puerto Rico goes to anything it should be the
| electrical grid itself that manages to go down for weeks
| anytime something as mild as a tropical depression looks
| in the island's direction.
| haneefmubarak wrote:
| Sure, but the other 50 states are also filled with
| American citizens who deserve things, many of whom are
| scrappy and resilient. OTOH, the money being spent is
| also ultimately that of the American citizens', so the
| government should strive to accomplish the most it can
| for any given mission and budget.
|
| In this case, the calculus may simply be that the mission
| can be more comprehensively and efficiently achieved via
| investments elsewhere that will similarly benefit
| Americans near those areas as a reinvestment would have
| benefitted in Puerto Rico.
| authpor wrote:
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The major difference, of course, is that those states
| have federal representatives with voting power to
| advocate for their needs and Puerto Rico does not.
|
| The story of the death of Arecibo is a stain on the way
| the United States treats its colonial territories.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That's a little over the top, if you want there to be a
| radio observatory in PR it would still be better to build
| a new one.
| carbocation wrote:
| > _(Also, the question of whether or not to make PR a
| state comes up periodically, and PR sides against it.)_
|
| All 3 referenda in PR since 2010 have favored statehood.
| colatkinson wrote:
| Notably many anti-statehood groups boycotted these
| plebiscites, and analysts noted that the questions were
| poorly structured. For example, the 2017 referendum had a
| result of 97% in favor of statehood... because only pro-
| statehood voters showed up.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_movement_in_Pu
| ert...
| sergiomattei wrote:
| They were boycotted because they were sham, non-binding
| referendums. There was never an effort from the mainland
| to introduce this into Congress _seriously_.
|
| Therefore. Since nobody in Congress or White House lifts
| a finger, the referendum becomes just another political
| rally cry for the local pro-statehood party.
|
| The United States and their political class have made it
| exceedingly clear that they favour the status quo -- both
| economically and politically -- at the expense of the
| island folk who suffer increasing austerity cuts and a
| deteriorating standard of living.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _was never an effort from the mainland to introduce
| this into Congress seriously_
|
| Statehood and its benefits isn't something to be
| unilaterally demanded. Puerto Rico should have the option
| to declare independence. But it's far too corrupt for
| political integration.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| I wholly understand your point, but there's a huge power
| imbalance here. We can run all the referendums we want.
|
| The US government has the full might of the US military,
| a reluctant political class and an economic interest in
| keeping the status quo.
|
| There has to be cooperation in both sides for either
| statehood or independence, if decolonization is to be
| achieved peacefully. Sadly, there's no will to negotiate
| from the US gov't.
|
| About corruption, well, it's true. Our ex-governor was
| recently indicted.
|
| However, I also find corruption allegations a convenient
| way to perpetuate this image of Puerto Ricans as
| freeloaders--completely missing how much the mainland
| benefits from us economically, both as a tax haven and as
| a source of tax revenue (no IRS federal tax, but Jones
| Act import restrictions).
|
| For more on economic benefits, think about this: a market
| of 2-3 million people locked in exclusively into US goods
| and markets due to colonial import restrictions.
|
| Taxation without representation.
| hermitdev wrote:
| Too corrupt as opposed to say, Illinois? I forget the
| exact numbers now, but something like 6 of the last 12
| governors have gone to jail for corruption, most recently
| Blagojevich. That's just at the top level; there's
| problems throughout the state... Not saying PR doesn't
| have problems, just pointing out actual states do, too.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Sorry, but I fail to see the relevance. Did Illinois
| declare independence from the US with its current
| apparently corrupt political class?
| whatshisface wrote:
| If corruption prevented political integration several
| current US states would not be integrated.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I find it exceedingly impossible that Puerto Rico is more
| corrupt than my home state of Louisiana.
| [deleted]
| whatshisface wrote:
| Interesting, I guess my information was out of date.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| The state of the island's electrical infrastructure is a
| much larger stain than the loss of an aging
| radiotelescope. Spend the money on that, instead.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This statement is a prime example of a fallacy known as
| false dichotomy.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
| enjeyw wrote:
| I'm not convinced it is. The statement translates to:
|
| "I think that the benefit for the community that
| infrastructure investment provides is so much greater
| than rebuilding the telescope, to the point that if I had
| absolute control of the limited gov budget I'd allocate
| all money to infrastructure."
|
| That's debatable, but it doesn't seem like a logical
| fallacy.
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| You can build infrastructure and a telescope.
| trasz wrote:
| Puertoricans are American citizens by name only - they
| can't vote, for example. It's a colony, and US treats it
| as such - it doesn't enjoy the privileges of actual US
| territory.
|
| If you want to help, becoming a proper, independent
| country could be a good start. The majority of citizens
| opposes the current colonial status, as evidenced by
| several referendums, but, well, it's not theirs to decide
| - because they are just a colony and aren't allowed to
| vote.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| > Puertoricans are American citizens by name only - they
| can't vote, for example.
|
| The veterans who died for the continental US beg to
| differ.
|
| > If you want to help, becoming a proper, independent
| country could be a good start.
|
| The US government has the full might of the US military,
| a reluctant political class and an economic interest in
| keeping it that way. It's difficult -- whether you're
| pro-statehood or independence.
| afiori wrote:
| The US does not grant the states a right to become
| independent countries either.
| Art9681 wrote:
| Puertoricans wear the same uniform and fight in the same
| wars as all Americans so that folks can continue to say
| ignorant stuff like the comment above. My great
| grandfather did it. My grandfather. I did it. And I'm
| sure the tradition will continue.
|
| From Title 8-ALIENS AND NATIONALITY CHAPTER
| 12-IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY SUBCHAPTER III-NATIONALITY
| AND NATURALIZATION Part I-Nationality at Birth and
| Collective Naturalization
|
| All persons born in Puerto Rico on or after April 11,
| 1899, and prior to January 13, 1941, subject to the
| jurisdiction of the United States, residing on January
| 13, 1941, in Puerto Rico or other territory over which
| the United States exercises rights of sovereignty and not
| citizens of the United States under any other Act, are
| declared to be citizens of the United States as of
| January 13, 1941. All persons born in Puerto Rico on or
| after January 13, 1941, and subject to the jurisdiction
| of the United States, are citizens of the United States
| at birth.
| sophacles wrote:
| Yes, they get to die for the USA. But they don't get a
| say like real citizens - no congressmen, no electoral
| votes, no senators. They do get to pay taxes though.
| Before you rant about how that's not important, I'd like
| to remind you of a certain group of English citizens who
| didn't have representation but were allowed to die and
| pay taxes for England.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Was I not a citizen until I was first able to vote for
| federal representation at the age of 25 after moving out
| of my hometown of DC?
| sophacles wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Real is probably the wrong term here, but certainly a
| citizen without the full suite of rights granted to you.
| If you have all the obligations without all the rights,
| you are a second class citizen. It's frankly absurd that
| someone can live within the US as a "citizen" without
| getting have meaningful representation.
| gambiting wrote:
| That's a weird argument. By the same logic current and
| former convicts are not citizens either.
| dr-detroit wrote:
| sophacles wrote:
| Well no - convicts are being punished for breaking the
| law.
|
| People born, raised and still living in DC, Puerto Rico,
| US virgin islands, Guam, and Marianas are being punished
| for not breaking the law.
| gambiting wrote:
| That's a different argument though. Punished or not, they
| are still citizens - so clearly whether you can or cannot
| vote doesn't change your citizenship.
| sophacles wrote:
| See the first post of mine that you responded to:
|
| > Real is probably the wrong term here, but certainly a
| citizen without the full suite of rights granted to you.
|
| I acknowledged the thing you are objecting to before you
| started objecting. If you want to bikeshed a loosely used
| term after it's been acknowledged as being the incorrect
| term - have fun.
| bombcar wrote:
| Many Americans are second-class citizens because they
| live in areas where even if they DID vote, it wouldn't
| count for anything.
|
| If Puerto Rico and DC were suddenly made part of
| California, nothing would change but suddenly they'd be
| "first class citizens"? (Besides now paying federal
| income tax)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I wish residents of DC didn't have to pay federal income
| tax :P
|
| DC being part of California would marginally change the
| distribution of the House. Agreed the Senate & FPTP is
| undemocratic.
| philistine wrote:
| It's not that the people of Puerto Ricans are lesser
| americans. It's that Puerto Rico itself as an institution
| has less rights. If a Puerto Rican moves to Alabama, they
| get the same rights and privileges, like voting, as
| anybody else.
| thehappypm wrote:
| The arrangement of Puerto Rico being a territory was a
| strategic decision. PR independence has a long history,
| but ultimately the economic and military benefits of
| being US citizens ended up outweighing the desire for
| independence. Being a self governing territory won out as
| being a sort of best of both worlds.
| [deleted]
| boredumb wrote:
| NOT a colony.... we're a territory. If you think puerto
| rico becoming it's own country and missing out on the
| aid, support and ease of travel provided by the federal
| government you are either malevolent or naive.
|
| Puerto Rican residents can vote on everything aside from
| federal elections.
| colatkinson wrote:
| > NOT a colony.... we're a territory
|
| How did the US acquire said territory? And after they
| acquired it, what did they do to those who did not want
| their nation to be a "territory?" For those unaware, I'll
| give you a hint: it did not involve a hearty Socratic
| discussion followed by a game of badminton [0].
|
| > If you think puerto rico becoming it's own country and
| missing out on the aid, support and ease of travel
| provided by the federal government you are either
| malevolent or naive.
|
| This worked out rather well for the Hawaiians, who are
| currently having their groundwater poisoned by the US
| military [1], and their ancestral land acquired by
| mainlanders while they are made homeless [2].
|
| In the recent non-binding referenda, and the bill to have
| a binding referendum which recently died in committee,
| there has been an option for "independence with free
| association" -- that is, an independent nation-state but
| with strong free trade and free travel agreements baked
| in [2]. Statehood is that, plus being subject to the
| whims of voters in Wisconsin, Idaho, et al. as to whether
| Puerto Ricans should be allowed funding for things. Keep
| in mind that there is no way out of this setup short of
| insurrection.
|
| Given Puerto Rico has a distinct language, culture, etc.
| from the US, I can only assume we're deciding that the
| Westphalian model of the nation-state is not a
| consideration. Given this, I would also like to propose
| the following for statehood:
|
| 1. Korea
|
| 2. Vietnam
|
| 3. Iraq
|
| 4. Iran
|
| 5. Afghanistan
|
| 6. Somalia
|
| 7. Syria
|
| 8. Mexico
|
| 9. Haiti
|
| 10. Dominican Republic
|
| These countries would surely flourish with the support
| and aid provided by the US federal government. And they
| were already, at one point or another, occupied by the
| US. So I can think of _no_ reason not to annex them,
| short of naivete or malevolence.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utuado_uprising
|
| [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/0
| 4/the-us...
|
| [2]: https://thehomemoreproject.org/blog/the-hawaiian-
| homelessnes...
| MockObject wrote:
| America acquired it fair and square, the same way nearly
| all land is acquired throughout human and animal history.
| Conquest. Those other areas haven't been annexed in the
| same way, because, after developments in the post WW2
| era, acquisition evolved from outright colonization, to
| control using local proxies and a comprador class
| economically dependent on the core.
| trasz wrote:
| Yukon is a territory. Here, the "territory" is just a
| pretty name for a colony. You can't vote, US constitution
| doesn't quite apply, you're getting peanuts from federal
| aid, and when there's a humanitarian catastrophe you're
| left for a month without electricity - but you are very
| welcomed in armed forces, because you're competent and
| when you die it doesn't matter to decision makers,
| because you can't vote. In short - you pay the price, but
| you don't get the benefits. How's that different from a
| colony?
|
| And yeah, becoming a US state would be better than
| independence, but it won't happen, because - you guessed
| it, you can't vote. By becoming an independent country
| you could get major powers to compete to do business with
| you - I'm pretty sure China would invest billions into
| your infrastructure, you could literally become America's
| Taiwan.
| sergiomattei wrote:
| > Puerto Rican residents can vote on everything aside
| from federal elections.
|
| So, a colony? Taxation without representation. We might
| not get taxed IRS federal planillas, but all the levies
| and duties plus the harmful Jones Act beg to differ with
| your characterization.
|
| The US is choking our economy in its current status.
| Statehood or independence, a binding referendum is
| _urgent_ at this point.
|
| Oh, and don't you remember how the US Supreme Court
| declared us second-class citizens recently? [0]
|
| [0]: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/scotus-
| declares-u-...
| killerdhmo wrote:
| "Vote on everything aside federal elections" - what
| precisely did you think this means? We can't vote for the
| president, our elected officials to Congress can't vote
| on the laws that are passed. What "voting" can we do,
| other than yes, local elections?
| jgalt212 wrote:
| and their residents pay taxes too.
| bombcar wrote:
| Some taxes, not all.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Puerto_Rico
|
| > Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the
| United States and Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens;
| however, Puerto Rico is not a U.S. state, but a U.S.
| insular area. Consequently, while all Puerto Rico
| residents pay federal taxes, many residents are not
| required to pay federal income taxes. Aside from income
| tax, U.S. federal taxes include customs taxes, federal
| commodity taxes, and federal payroll taxes (Social
| Security, Medicare, and Unemployment taxes).
|
| Any attempt to give PR statehood or make it part of an
| existing state (Florida, I guess?) would meet with
| vociferous objection _from Puerto Rico_.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >As a child, I loved going there and its the earliest part of
| my childhood that I remember something motivating me to
| pursue science/math. Even in my later part of my life I was
| able to do some research with the observatory which kick
| started my current career.
|
| Honestly seems like this is what they considered most when
| deciding to turn it into an education center.
| Kalium wrote:
| > Another issue is that we have our brightest minds leaving
| the island because there's no fulfilling or well paying work
| to be done. The lack of this observatory is another reason
| more people will leave.
|
| The problem with this line of logic isn't that it's wrong or
| even that it ignores the goal of scientific funding to
| produce scientific research. The primary problem with this
| line of argument is that it's equally good for Wyoming, West
| Virginia, and a dozen or more other deprived places that
| could all benefit substantially from the STEM-inspiration of
| a local megaproject.
| nocoiner wrote:
| West Virginia already has Green Bank, no?
| rahen wrote:
| They also published a video with some renders of the NGAT:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=518&v=2qiu86-ZZdU
|
| I really wish it had been built.
| rtkwe wrote:
| A single large collecting area still has sensitivity advantages
| vs arrays of smaller dishes. It was also used for radar and
| measuring distances to various objects in the solar system and
| the beam pattern from a single source there is vastly simpler
| than trying to use a phased array for the same task.
| mandevil wrote:
| Arecibo had an active capability: radar mapping Venus most
| famously, that really can't be substituted with synthetic
| approaches. You can use aperture synthesis (from VLBA all the
| way to IVS) for greater resolving power, but they don't solve
| the coherent output problem.
| cproctor wrote:
| I don't see how $1-3M per year, for five years, is going to lead
| to "a world-class educational institution."
| photochemsyn wrote:
| In reasearch and education terms, that's literally peanuts. For
| comparison, the US Department of Energy operates 17 national
| laboratories, with an average budget of ~$700 million per year
| each.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| Makes zero sense, and NSF's best answer is that they are
| soliciting ideas about how. Arecibo is somewhat remote -- it's
| in a karst terrain that was chosen because it was so bumpy that
| it formed a convenient bowl for the dish. Its easy for the
| roads connecting it to San Juan to get shut down or degraded by
| storms. Without the telescope, it's really hard to imagine
| which students would aspire to go there. But it's a _great_
| place for.... A telescope.
| boredumb wrote:
| Arecibo isn't remote. From San Juan I can get there in 40
| minutes and it's directly off the 22 which is definitely not
| an easy freeway to be shut down short of a hurricane. It's
| also directly in between mayaguez and san juan both of which
| have a ton of students.
|
| I guess I don't see how using 1-3 million dollars to operate
| an educational center is nonsensical. It's a central area
| between major universities, fairly flat terrain, northwestern
| coast so it's generally not going to see the worst of the
| storms and also has some existing infrastructure.
|
| With that said it's a tragedy that they aren't going to
| rebuild the telescope in it's original glory.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| I guess San Juan sprawls a bit -- took me almost 2h when I
| was there in 2020 (not too long after Maria), and we did
| face a partial washout and downed trees slowing down the
| last bit of the trip. But obv I trust a local that it's
| usually accessible :).
| lupire wrote:
| World class means it attracts people from around the world.
|
| It's 40 minutes from San Juan, which is on a relatively
| small island on the ocean.
|
| And hurricanes have a habit of hitting there.
|
| PR deserves great local institutions, but it is less
| accessible than most places that have much larger nearby
| population.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Puerto Rico is a fairly large (top 100 largest) island
| with international airports. It is larger than many other
| islands that have observatories.
|
| Areceibo already WAS a world class telescope and was
| closer to an international airport than many other
| observatories.
|
| The only valid point you've made is about hurricanes and
| earthquakes. However I haven't seen any discussion as to
| how those effect contruction costs at that site vs
| others.
| tokai wrote:
| $1m a year is not gonna get much. It might not be the case, but
| it smells a bit like a token amount to keep something going -
| so they don't have to deal with the drama of closing the site.
| jeffheard wrote:
| Feels like a prime opportunity for a National Park. Restore it to
| the point where it won't degrade further, add a museum,
| plantetarium, library, and preserve the land around the
| telescope. It'd be really neat! I'd take my kids to be sure.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think (at least last time I looked into it, it may have
| changed since then) the problem was that some of the scientific
| equipment is heavy and suspended by cables which are degrading
| over time. I don't think it is like a battleship for example,
| which degrades into a battleship shaped hunk of steel which can
| be easily restored into a museum ship -- cables under tension
| fail catastrophically.
| nomel wrote:
| > cables under tension fail catastrophically.
|
| I'm not sure there's much left, with the last failure:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PZsblS1BUc
| Aroga wrote:
| mihaic wrote:
| What I think this misses is that one of the main purposes of
| something like Arecibo is to be inspirational.
|
| The coolness factor is something that helps science as a whole,
| from making kids interested in scientific activities and even
| boosting morale for scientists in the field.
|
| Morale is one of those things that can't be quantified, but that
| can't be ignored.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| The main purpose was militaristic and science benefited as a
| result. We no longer need it to spy on the Russians so I highly
| doubt anyone is willing to pony up the billions just to have
| something cool and inspirational when it won't even be cutting
| edge anymore
| rippercushions wrote:
| Eh. I visited Arecibo almost 20 years ago, and even back then
| it was more historical monument pickled in time (I still recall
| some exhibits celebrating the Space Shuttle as the greatest
| thing since sliced bread) than anything scientifically
| inspirational, much less "cool". It very much felt neglected
| and the subsequent collapse, while sad, was entirely par for
| course.
| rtkwe wrote:
| The Shuttle is IMO still really cool and there are missions
| it could do like repairing Hubble or the initial stages of
| the ISS construction that would be really hard to do with the
| tiny little capsules we've reverted to. It's size and
| separate airlock alone give it abilities you can't get in any
| capsule flying today.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| To be fair, we reverted to capsules because the Shuttle was
| so expensive that there was no additional will to spend the
| necessary amount (when accounting for defense contractor
| bloat) on an effective successor that wasn't a flying death
| trap.
|
| Even those capsules (especially the one actually flying
| people right now) only barely got the funding they needed.
| dale_glass wrote:
| But at this point, why not build a new one instead? It's
| old tech at any rate.
|
| Also, why not try an iterative approach? What would be the
| cost to build an extra copy?
|
| In fact, doesn't the Hubble share parts with spy
| satellites?
| rtkwe wrote:
| There's a lot invested already in just getting the main
| mass up there and the core development of the system so
| building and installing small improvements can keep the
| investment useful for lower cost than replacing it.
|
| Documentation on the spy satellite connection is sketchy
| but it seems to be designed similarly to an NRO satellite
| KH11 iirc but I think it was modified a lot and the more
| modern spy satellites might not be as readily convertible
| to deep space observation. So you have that work and the
| cost to loft it vs the cost to install some upgrades to
| and existing satellite.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The reason to not iterate on the Shuttle is that it was a
| fundamentally dangerous design, fixing the issues would
| be comparable to just making a new ground-up design. It
| would also be really expensive because the companies that
| made it have gotten used to the government teat. Modern
| American spacecraft are the 'new' Shuttle in that they
| incorporate all the safety lessons learned. The closest
| functionality-wise Shuttle successor would be crewed
| Starship.
|
| Hubble shares a chassis with old spy satellites but IIRC
| all the optics have been replaced. There is a study
| ongoing for the potential of docking a Dragon capsule to
| it to boost its orbit and possibly service it via EVA.
| nullc wrote:
| I think that's at least equally the fault of the visitors
| center as anything about the instrument itself. The visitors
| center gave a very much working instrument a "historical
| monument pickled in time" feel.
|
| I think there is a reasonable case to be made that the
| ultimate cause of the collapse was that not enough was spent
| on the visitors center, leaving guests with the impression
| that it wasn't a valuable instrument, leading to sustained
| absolutely minimal funding, leading to deferred maintenance
| (since they preferred to spend the money they got on actually
| operating!), leading to collapse.
|
| So perhaps think of this in the future if you're about to
| criticize a scientific instrument for frivolous spending on
| visitor center upgrades.
| nocoiner wrote:
| Yeah. Maybe I'm just soft-hearted, but I really don't think the
| benefit of this can be overstated. By dint of its location,
| configuration and instances of cultural cachet, this was a
| particularly unique and inspiring facility. I was pretty moved
| by it when I visited it in my 30s a decade ago - I can only
| imagine how many Puerto Rican elementary students were inspired
| to pursue science following a field trip to the telescope.
|
| To me, rebuilding the scope is a no-brainer. Whatever it costs
| (assuming the number is in the low nine-digits), it's worth it
| for the public relations value alone.
|
| It's too bad the Puerto Rican government is so cash-strapped -
| I wouldn't be shocked if they could realize a positive ROI
| (based on tourism, research, local support, etc.) if the feds
| gave them the money that would go to clean-up and PR pursued
| reconstruction on its own. Unfortunately, while I think federal
| dollars could be put to efficient use here, I think the
| commonwealth has higher priorities they need to pursue.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| FWIW you can still buy Arecibo merchandise here
|
| https://ao-galaxy-eshop.myshopify.com/
| z3c0 wrote:
| Surprisingly cool merch. Love the Arecibo Message tee, thanks
| for sharing
| pantojax45 wrote:
| Is it in a particularly climate susceptible place? Seems like if
| it was just hit by a hurricane, there will be more in the future.
| Perhaps not a good place in an eta of climate change?
| rtkwe wrote:
| It's up in the mountains in a bowl though so it's shielded in
| many ways from the worst effects of storms. It weathered them
| fine for about 50 years.
| Nokinside wrote:
| Time passed it.
|
| FAST (five-hundred-meter aperture telescope) already exists and
| combining smaller ones is also an option.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| FAST being in China is problematic.
|
| Emblematic of decay of American power that we aren't rebuilding
| it. And a betrayal of Puerto Rico, for which this is a symbol
| of pride.
| seydor wrote:
| Looking at the megatelescopes that they are building in Chile, i
| think its memory will soon be forgotten
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Magellan_Telescope
| rrss wrote:
| why? these are optical telescopes
| blamazon wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1294/
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| "For England, James?"
|
| "No, for me."
| superkuh wrote:
| On the plus side, the Green Bank Telescope has been fitted with a
| test radar transmitter and there are solid plans to put in a
| 500-kilowatt radar. This isn't quite a replacement for Arecibo,
| but it'll help fill the gap.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| It's a testimony that its ROI is too bad for this human epoch and
| technology.
| lupire wrote:
| Testimony that technology has advanced to more efficient and
| less location sensitive telescope designs?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Technology hasn't progressed past the need for large, filled
| apertures.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| It's decoupled of when that happens but tightly coupled with
| the rejection of that attempt.
| Miraste wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is here, but even if you look
| only at single-dish radio telescopes, humanity already has
| a better one in FAST.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| And yet we preserve places like Stonehenge, when modern
| calendars are considered superior.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-17 23:01 UTC)