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How the famed Arecibo telescope fell—and how it might rise again:
In an earlier submission, requerdanos mentioned the following article:The [December 1, 2020] loss [of the Arecibo platform] dismayed scientists worldwide. Although 57 years old, Arecibo was still a scientific trailblazer. Its powerful radar could bounce radio waves off other planets and asteroids, revealing the contours of their surfaces. Other antennas could heat plasma in Earth's upper atmosphere, creating artificial aurorae for study. And for most of Arecibo's life, it was the biggest radio dish in the world, able to sense the faintest emissions, from the metronomic beats of distant stellar beacons called pulsars to the whisper of rarefied gases between galaxies.
The public, familiar with the majestic dish from films such as Contact and GoldenEye, also felt the loss. And it was a bitter blow to the people of Puerto Rico, who embraced hosting the technological marvel. Some 130 people work at the observatory, and many more derive indirect economic benefits from it. Every schoolchild on the island goes on a field trip to see the telescope, and those experiences often lead to science careers, says astrobiologist Abel Méndez of the University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo. With its fall, "Puerto Rico loses much more than any other place," he says.
[...] Meanwhile, astronomers are looking to the future. "First we mourned, then we had a wake, then we got down to work," says Joanna Rankin, an astronomer at the University of Vermont. Together with Arecibo staff, researchers last month delivered a white paper to NSF describing plans for a new $400 million telescope on the same site. Although any rebuilding effort faces major political and financial hurdles, the proposal aims for an instrument with even more dazzling capabilities than the one that was lost. "There's been a remarkable amount of commitment and energy," Rankin says.
Puerto Rico commits $8 million to rebuild Arecibo telescope:
There's a glimmer of hope for the collapsed Arecibo Observatory telescope as 2020 draws to a close. El Nuevo Diareports that Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez has signed an executive order approving $8 million to help rebuild the radio telescope. Its reconstruction is important as a matter of "public policy" and reestablishing the Observatory as a "world-class educational center," the Governor's office said.
[...] We wouldn't see this as more than a start. The $8 million in funding is unlikely to come anywhere close to reconstructing the telescope. We've asked the NSF for comment on the financial pledge, but it's safe to presume a revival would require additional help.
Still, the funds represent an important step. They signal the territory's commitment to Arecibo and its space studies despite the loss. They might also spur some in the US government to devote the extra funding needed to resurrect the Observatory. Don't be surprised if 2021 is a brighter year for the facility, even if any rebuilding effort is likely to take much longer.
[Ed Note: Information about Puerto Rico's funding commitment was added after this story went live. - Fnord666]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @03:04PM (11 children)
>> Every schoolchild on the island goes on a field trip to see the telescope, and those experiences often lead to science careers
Spend $400 million on a field trip destination instead of putting money into teaching basic math skills, which are sadly lacking in most Americans? Should we also prevent schoolchildren from going to McDonalds since those experiences often lead to burger flipping careers?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @05:19PM (4 children)
At the risk of feeding the troll, why not do both -- have something big & impressive to get kids interested in science and also put some money into teaching math skills (or more generally STEM subjects).
The brightest robotics guy I know came out of Puerto Rico. Next time I see him (at an MIT reunion) I'm going to ask if he was taken to see Arecibo as a kid.
(Score: 1) by kvutza on Sunday January 17 2021, @05:51PM (3 children)
Yeah, the kids have to want to learn (and some of them hopefully to go to) STEM fields, otherwise teachers' work will be like casting pearls before swines. And outreach is a way for it. If you limit outreach, don't cry for STEM being mostly white / East Asian then.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @07:12PM (2 children)
Given tribal identities in US politics, I strongly doubt the guy who titled his post "Love that Democrat logic" was ever going to cry about diversity in STEM. Your concern is touching, though.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 17 2021, @07:57PM (1 child)
We do need more diversity. Unfortunately, the Demidiots are going about it all wrong. You don't increase intellectual diversity by fishing among the dregs at the bottom of the intellectual pool. Nor do you increase intellectual diversity by lowering standards so that you can give doctorate's degrees to retards. The diversity we need would happen almost automagically if we invested educational dollars into other cultures. Stick a Peruvian, a Russian, a Mexican, a Chinese, a Filipino, and an Arab all together to solve a problem, and you're likely to get some unexpected results. Each of them brings something from his/her home country's culture and educational background.
In the US, we seem to think that the darker a person's skin, the better the solution? Fuck that's dumb. It's no less dumb than the racist idea that white skin makes for better solutions.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday January 18 2021, @12:12AM
Demi- [dictionary.com] - prefix, designates "half". As in "demigod".
di- [dictionary.com] - prefix, designates double. As in "dioxide"
Demi-di-ots = 1/2 x 2 x ots = fullots.
This letting aside that -ot [wiktionary.org] - suffix, designates "a kind of" (as in idiot) or a diminutive (as in Pierrot or Runawayot). But, see also Merlot [wikipedia.org] and harlot [etymonline.com]
Which makes "Demidiots" = some kind of "full" or "complete"
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 4, Interesting) by theluggage on Sunday January 17 2021, @05:48PM (5 children)
...or spend $401 million and throw in some half-decent teaching materials to follow up the visit and ensure the kids actually learn some math and science relevant to the telescope while their imaginations are stimulated, so they see how math and science actually do interesting things.
Meanwhile, kids tend to make their own way to McDonalds - but hey, yeah, give them a behind-the-scenes tour because, like it or not, learning a bit about food preparation and hygiene will be a lot more helpful to some kids than Pythagoras. Just don't pre-judge which "some kids" we are talking about here - some of those future Fields medal winners will have to work their way through college, too.
You know, maybe the reason that kids don't learn "basic math skills" is that they don't give a flying fuck about long division, adding fractions or memorising the names of triangles or learning other dog tricks by rote without actually understanding them. Maybe they're justified in not giving a fuck, because the only time in their lives most of them will need "basic math skills" is when they're shading in bubbles on a math test... even if they go on to higher education - not that they will take things further if they've been bored rigid by learning the sort of math that would have got them a nice job as a clerk if only we still lived in 1950 . (Clue: a math/physics/engineering degree does not involve learning the 137 times table, adding up long lists of proper fractions or dividing Planck's Constant into the ratio 1:4:9)...
...and no, you don't need to "learn" basic math to be a mathematician or a scientist - you need to understand basic math, which is a whole different ball game, and something current education fails at badly - I've seen kids who can work out the circumference of a 1" diameter circle without breaking a sweat staring blankly into space when asked to work out how long a piece of card should be to make a 1" diameter cylinder. I've seen classes of kids who have supposedly "learned" algebra who, given a problem that could easily be answered by composing and solving a simple equation, just try "guess and check"... because so much effort is being diverted into teaching them the sort of "basic math" that people (mis-)remember doing in the good old days (when a "computer" was someone paid to do hard sums) that they never learn to use it (consequence: they see it as useless).
...and the problem isn't lack of money, its the tying of money to "results" and "progress in basic math" as judged by MBA types who like to measure everything with simple numbers (because they don't understand math and science either). Turns out "understanding" is harder to score consistently (which MBA types think means "accurately") with a scantron form than lots of short simple "sums" or math fact questions. When one of the fundamental theories behind modern "assessment" starts from the self-evidently bullshit axiom that there exists a single, 1-dimensional measure of math ability, there isn't a lot of hope. The #1 priority in math teaching becomes teaching kids to pass these distorted tests - if you can't grade it it didn't happen - and the result bears as much resemblance to math as painting-by-numbers does to art.
...and then you try having a class discussion on how you can use place notation and other mathematical understanding to estimate, check and correct your mental arithmetic or make sure that you didn't hit the wrong button on your calculator, little Fatima goes home and tells soccer mom that "today we talked about how you multiply 31 by 50" and suddenly you've got a twitter campaign against the evil communist new math...
It's not about not teaching basic math - it's about toning down the disproportionate, totemic importance that some aspects have acquired. Meanwhile, nothing wrong with kids learning tables and 1-digit addition as a fun game in Kindergarten, but if it doesn't happen at that age you're gonna have to work around it.
To be fair, it's not all "evil conservatives" either - education seems particularly afflicted by the lack of middle gears - there have been liberal/ivory tower (or just plain aspergic) voices suggesting that any rote learning/memorisation whatsoever should be "considered harmful" harmful, or that kids should be somehow ripped from their mothers arms and protected from corruption by the natural numbers until they have mastered set theory... and if you're trying to introduce problems with more than one valid solution there's always some fluffy bunny who stands up and tells the class "there's no such thing as a wrong answer" (of course there is, but its much better if the kid has a chance to figure out it is wrong for themselves before the teacher parachutes in and corrects them).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @06:27PM
> throw in some half-decent teaching materials to follow up
Nice rant, sounds like something pulled your chain this morning (or this year)!
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @09:07PM (3 children)
Liberal/progressive educators are to blame. Their goal is for the lowest performing (i.e., blackest) kids to be considered "good" at math. Nothing has worked for decades. Thus, the obvious answer is to lower the standards of what is taught. VOILA! Black kids are good at math; you just had to teach it to them in a "non-racist" way. Studying and drilling at home on your subject and paying attention in class is the racist way.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday January 17 2021, @11:37PM (2 children)
That will be why Mississippi and Alabama are at the cutting edge of research I suppose.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18 2021, @02:40PM
You would be surprised where some top researchers came from.
Of course, they tend to go where the money is, which means the rich cities. Alabama is home to Huntsville where much of America's rocketry program was based in the early days. They still do rocket work there. Shows your ignorance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18 2021, @02:57PM
Mississippi is 38% black. There is another correlation besides the one you think you are making.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Sunday January 17 2021, @03:07PM (35 children)
A slight reprieve under Obama - after it had suffered what was clearly an Act of a very shy God - let it stay on target to fail slowly rather than catastrophically, but it was still on death row.
This wasn't a 2020 problem, not even a 2010s one. Blame those who would rather fund wars than science.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Sunday January 17 2021, @04:08PM (23 children)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday January 17 2021, @11:39PM (16 children)
No problem, they can do their astronomy on one of those privately owned, free market telescopes.
(Score: 1, Informative) by khallow on Monday January 18 2021, @12:11AM (15 children)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday January 18 2021, @12:29AM (14 children)
No it doesn't. Nothing even close to the scale of Arecibo.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 18 2021, @09:49PM (13 children)
Keck Telescope is a counterexample. Arecibo doesn't need the money they're throwing at it.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday January 18 2021, @10:25PM (12 children)
Not much use if you're needing a radio telescope, which is what Arecibo was.
Sweet. Let them know that, I'm sure they'll be glad of your expertise.
(Score: 1, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday January 19 2021, @12:20AM (11 children)
You don't need a radio telescope, let us note, but even if we ignore that, we still have that private money can pay for radio telescopes just like it does for optical telescopes.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday January 19 2021, @01:37AM (7 children)
What the hell does that mean? Radio telescopes can do things optical telescopes can't do, which is why they get built.
Private money does not pay for what you think it does, which you will discover if you decide to look at who pays for the research on the "private" telescope you linked to. The one that is still not a radio telescope.
Did you phone the guys at Arecibo yet to tell them that you've decided they don't need all that money?
(Score: 1, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday January 19 2021, @04:24AM (6 children)
Just because something has capabilities, doesn't mean that those capabilities are needed. The use of the term, "need" is useless when you can't explain the need.
Radio versus optical telescope is irrelevant. A different EM frequency doesn't change the viability of the funding model. And private money did indeed pay for the Keck telescope ($140 million for construction of the pair) whether or not it "pays for" the research on that telescope.
I bet $140 million would go far at Arecibo, particularly, if the people running the show were very experienced in the private world.
The Puerto Rico governor isn't allotting the observatory $8 million because these guys need the money.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday January 19 2021, @07:34PM (5 children)
Wow. You still have the ability to amaze.
I thought you couldn't get any less self aware, but...
Why would we need radio telescopes?
Square Kilometre Array [wikipedia.org]
But, to address your original point again. Show me a single privately owned and run radio telescope. You can't because despite your libertarian wet dreams fundamental science is always funded with public money, because private money is not interested.
Fortunately for Astronomy what khallow thinks is needed is not taken into account.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:01AM (4 children)
You don't answer the question! The quote merely states that there's improved capabilities. Capability is not need.
The Allen Telescope Array [wikipedia.org]. We can now skip your fantasies about libertarian wet dreams. As I noted, there's nothing special about the funding source that rules out privately funded radio telescope, because well, there are privately funded radio telescopes just like there are privately funded optical telescopes.
We also need to keep in mind that the ease of getting huge public funding has greatly distorted the market, both for researchers and for funding sources. We have a generation of researchers who go for the public projects because that's where the money is at, science be damned.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday January 20 2021, @06:52PM (3 children)
I'm bored now. Carry on being wrong.
I have lost interest.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 21 2021, @04:41AM (2 children)
FTFY. Bluster only gets you so far.
I see this all the time in arguments for flashy research projects. Innumerate people who don't have a clue what the research does or should cost, are telling me how important it is that we burn taxpayer money on it.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday January 21 2021, @08:05PM (1 child)
That is not even close to what we were debating, and you know it.
You can't show me a single example of a privately owned and run radio telescope that can compete with any public research funding, because there aren't any.
Because there are no profits to be had, and you know it but you continue to argue in bad faith.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 22 2021, @12:50AM
I already did, you just choose to completely ignore it. That box is checked.
I notice also that you've moved the goalposts to "compete with any public research funding". Once again, your innumeracy rears its ugly head. Nothing that needs to show results can compete with a funding source that pulls from captive revenue, taxes, and dumps without regard to cost or outcome. It doesn't matter if it's radio telescopes or hotdog stands. Once one side gets huge sums of unaccountable money, the game is over.
You also ignore that the way to get privately funded projects to compete with their ludicrous public counterparts is by cutting the public funding. I'd rather have the competition than the money. Let's give a few examples.
Fusion power has been 20 years away for something like 50 years. It's not going anywhere in the next 20 years either. The reason is that virtually all research is publicly funded and doesn't have to do anything productive, much less produce a cost-effective power plant that can hook up to the grid.
The International Space Station has done remarkably little over its 20+ year lifespan. In particular, we have yet to find any industrial or biological process that needs to be done in space (the fabled "killer app" of space industry). But they have found plenty of stuff that we can research how to do on Earth for less than the ISS study costed, like crystal growth (protein, semiconductors), flame studies in zero gee, metal foams, etc. Biological effects of long term weightlessness, and a few other things need a space environment, but you can get that for a whole lot less than what the ISS offers.
There's also the NASA no effect. A private entity with limited knowledge of space endeavors recruits some NASA scientists or engineers because they're the best in their fields, right? Well, turns out that those scientists and engineers have no concept of working in the private world and would traditionally give very negative advice. One needs vast sums to do anything in space.
One of the reasons SpaceX worked (and why it's such a big deal in space development now), is because Elon Musk outright blew off such negative advice and had the personal funds to see his vision through. He ended up developing his Falcon 9 for a tenth what NASA would have initially budgeted for such development and number of launches.
He also had great timing. The Department of Defense had recently broken up the NASA-enforced launch cartel by forcing Boeing and Lockheed Martin to compete on defense department launch contracts with the "Evolutionary Expendable Launch Vehicle" (EELV) program. And the Space Shuttle was on its way out with no serious contender on the horizon. The present day Space Launch System (SLS) is the fourth failure in a row to be NASA's replacement for the Shuttle.
All that money spent and all that competition avoided to no end.
Finally, there's the absence of a next generation fission reactor for the developed world. Multiple countries: the US, Germany, UK, Japan, Canada, and France have expended enormous sums on fission reactors. But we still don't have rudimentary fuel rod recycling - which is one of the huge failings of the current system or safer reactors on the horizon to replace the ones we currently have.
We have a long history of near useless publicly funded projects that supplant useful research which can't compete - paying researchers to waste their time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @01:54AM (2 children)
Yikes, I hope that was a sarcastic comment. Why don't they just use a cell phone camera when they take your dental xrays? Why do you need an infrared camera to see where you are losing heat out of your house when you can just use your cell phone?
There have been lots of arguments about the wisdom of the dependence on philanthropy to advance science in the astronomical community, but there's a LOT of physics ignorance in your other comment.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 19 2021, @04:50AM (1 child)
I'll note here that there's a demonstration of need for these applications. Dental X-rays are needed because people get various sorts of dental diseases and injuries which can't be seen by external examination. Losing heat out of a building increases the cost of operating that building.
Where is the corresponding need in radio astronomy?
There are similar arguments about the wisdom of depending on government funding for same. As to the "LOT of physics ignorance" you have even one thing in mind?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @04:03PM
What I was getting at, which was only implied in my post, is that different physical phenomena are shown in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. You can't see thermal effects in the visible spectrum, but you can in the far infarred spectrum, the same as how a picture of your teeth do not show the interior structure like an xray does. No matter how wonderful Keck, OWL, ELT, etc. are at making nice pictures, none of them could generate a map of the surface of Venus like a radio telescope. My guess is that you understand this, which is why I was surprised by your comment that radio telescopes provide no benefit, unless your comment was based upon the position that astronomy is generally not useful and not worth supporting with public funds.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 18 2021, @04:07AM (5 children)
Yes, because the mighty economy and its dedicated MBA priests set aside money to put a man on the Moon, certify the existence of the Higgs boson, discover the neutrino oscillations, observe the gravitational waves, peek into the XRay emissions from the superheated matter falling into the blackholes at the center of our galaxy, observe the Sun's weather and act as an first warning for solar flares heading towards Earth and so on and so forth.
And they unwaveringly continue to fund all the scientific projects of this world, the Wall Street market and the London forex have dedicated departments for science.
All the project got (and continue to get) financed by the markets; except for the Arecibo observatory, which was let at the mercy of the govt, this why it fell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18 2021, @02:47PM (1 child)
You don't realize that the space program was a way to get ahead of the Soviets for military purposes (ICBMs, spy satellites, etc.)? This was "dual use" tech and the moon launch was for propaganda against our biggest enemy and rival where countries were choosing which side to ally themselves with (Cold War). Yes, some science, but also a lot of military use or research for possible military use in the heyday of the space program.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 18 2021, @02:58PM
So, what else I don't realize? That the "dual use" was also run on govt money?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 19 2021, @05:04AM (2 children)
And the obvious rebuttal: opportunity cost. These things come at a staggering cost.
They do actually - it's just in things practical to them like high frequency trading and stochastic analysis (practical applications are IMHO is where most scientific work of the world should be). I mentioned an example, Keck Telescope (which is actually a coordinated pair of massive ground-based telescopes in Hawaii) which construction was funded by a private source. Turns out one has a wider range of funding options than merely Wall Street markets and London forex.
Projects which generate concrete positive ROI (not necessarily profit) are self-funding. Projects which don't will always have persistent trouble with things like maintenance.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday January 19 2021, @05:37AM (1 child)
That's not a rebuttal, just dismissing the value of fundamental research. I guess that's explicable, since the value is not quantifiable as $profit.
Yes, the $cost is high. This is why the MBA priest will never sustain them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 19 2021, @12:11PM
And you are personally paying how much for fundamental research? A willingness to pay for research only with Other Peoples' Money is a strong indication of the low value of the research in question.
Because fundamentally there's no interest in the outcome of publicly funded research. It's all status signalling. I find it telling that people in this thread have talked of the "value" and "need" of Arecibo's radio astronomy, but without a single real world example to back them up. That tells me the actual value of such research isn't a part of their reasoning.
My bet is that because the failure of Arecibo has proven humiliating, there will be a flashy new project to replace it. That project, should it ever be completed, will be well-funded only as long as it's perceived as exciting and new. Then it too will suffer from the lack of maintenance that doomed the last radio telescope and the cycle will continue.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday January 17 2021, @06:11PM (5 children)
Umm, hell no. Sorry, but this thing failed over 10 years after cowboy boots with a suit dumbfuck was out of office. I think a decade is long enough to say, the problem was people after that. Whatever shape it was in, 10 years is plenty time to inspect it and fix any problems.
It was a bunch of failed cables. 10 years is long enough to replace them - especially since they've been hearing them snap daily for those 10 years.
If you buy a house, and there's a small leak in the roof, and you ignore it for 10 years and now the wood your house is made of is completely rotten and you have a 2 inch layer of mold covering everything, it's on you, not on the guy who didn't maintain it before you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @09:59PM (4 children)
I know a guy who owns a business involving materials testing, corrosion inspection, safety, monitoring, etc. And he owns a house and land and spends winters on Puerto Rico.
He wasn't surprised this happened. His comment: the Puerto Ricans are really good at building things, but really terrible at maintaining them.
(Score: 2, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday January 17 2021, @11:43PM (3 children)
Your friend is an idiot then, as the Arecibo Observatory is owned and run by the National Science Foundation which is a Federal agency.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18 2021, @01:31AM (2 children)
Your brain went full zombie. Who do you think is employed to do the work at Arecibo? Some magical mystical creatures with NSF DNA? Maybe Puerto Ricans? You must live in ivory-tower theoretical philosopher world. Down here on earth, the actual workers told NSF mgt. that everything was okay, when it obviously was not. Real world man, read about it, learn.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday January 18 2021, @07:44PM (1 child)
That is hilarious. The A/C who thinks we live on a flat earth lectures me about how he thinks the real world works.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @02:38AM
Dude, he's got a mildly racist friend that lives on the same island!@!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 17 2021, @09:37PM (4 children)
I guess the budget was starved so much, they couldn't afford a competent maintenance manager to ring the alarms when things were falling apart.
Of course, if you want to get partisan about it, I notice Obama didn't increase Arecibo's budget.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18 2021, @12:48AM (1 child)
budget, and given how many years of gridlock in budgets we've seen over the past 20 years, to the point of some of them not getting done for months or longer after they were supposed to be turned in, the fact that he wouldn't have earmarked finances to something that wouldn't have gotten approved and would have been seen as 'lower priority' by the public (both those who did and didn't vote for him) isn't at all surprising.
The better question might be why we are tolerating a government like this, and why we are allowing them to be paid and have government health care plans when they AREN'T DOING THEIR FUCKING JOBS. If the budget isn't passed on-time, congress should have all of its privileges and incomes frozen, same or worse than furloughed employees. Just because government isn't free market doesn't mean they shouldn't have penalties for their actions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18 2021, @04:12AM
Because you made sure to elect a Senate that's always involved in political posturing with the executive?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday January 18 2021, @12:55AM
I thought budgets were set by Congress? Or does POTUS have influence over some departments?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday January 18 2021, @01:21AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by dx3bydt3 on Sunday January 17 2021, @03:17PM
It sounds like they're proposing a mechanism like a butterfly valve.
from TFA:
"a flat, 300-meter-wide, rigid platform, bridging the sinkhole, and studded with more than 1000 closely packed 9-meter dishes. The dishes would not steer but the disk would, with hydraulics tilting it more than 45° from the horizontal"
I'd like to see a sketch of this, I did some searching and wasn't able to find the white paper that the article referred to.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Sunday January 17 2021, @04:40PM (6 children)
When considering whether or not to rebuild this, keep in mind that the bigger-than-Aricebo Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope [wikipedia.org] exists and is in active operation since first light in 2016. Political considerations aside, it is reasonable to ask if it makes sense to rebuild or to work towards larger space based telescopes instead.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Sunday January 17 2021, @05:10PM
Arecibo had some capabilities that FAST doesn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Spherical_Telescope#Comparison_with_Arecibo_Telescope [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @05:13PM
After reading the wiki introduction, it sounds like FAST has a number of political problems and may well become a tourist destination...and all those cell phones reduce the utility as a radio telescope.
I'm happy to have a fraction of my taxes go to rebuilding on the Arecibo site. Nothing lasts forever and it sounds like a new telescope on the same site can be better than the original.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @09:20PM (1 child)
A space based antenna could be HUGE, without gravity all you need to do is shape tinfoil into a huge parabola with no other support structure
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday January 17 2021, @09:40PM
Solar wind will still frustrate you...
AKA "Solar sail"
http://www.andybrain.com/archive/solar-sails.htm [andybrain.com]
https://www.tor.com/2019/06/03/light-sails-in-science-and-fiction/ [tor.com]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 17 2021, @09:40PM
If I have to choose, I'd prefer space-based telescopes. But, it is also good to have more eyes, in different locations. A better, more modern Arecibo would almost certainly pay for itself.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18 2021, @04:14AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 17 2021, @05:13PM (13 children)
That is a tidbit I never heard before. They blew air through the wire cables, to keep the wires dry. So, hot, humid, Puerto Rican air was blown through the wires. No one ever thought that this air might be the cause of corrosion? Strange. And, it is certainly not clear how they hooked up a bunch of fans to blow air, without compromising the cables or the sockets.
Wow. They knew wires were breaking, but did not believe there was any risk? Just wow.
Lugo insists that the poor maintenance in place when he took over excuses his own poor maintenance record? Again, just wow.
Failure was designed into the system. The socket design wasn't especially good. I'm not sure what design would have worked, but I would start by examining the possibility of having Navy seamen or boy scouts weave the wire rope back on itself to form eyes in the ends. That would be a bitch of a job, but you wouldn't be relying on some zinc "glue" to fill a void that you could never inspect satisfactorily. You CAN inspect the eyes in the ends of ropes.
When they discovered corrosion, their solution was to paint the wire ropes? I've NEVER heard of a maintenance program that called for painting wire rope. The paint will only trap moisture inside, so that it can't escape. Blowing air? I was mistaken at first reading. No air compressors, just fans. So the new air being introduced inside the layer of paint wasn't dried at all, it seems.
It appears that some/many/most of those cables were OEM. That is, they've remained in place for the lifetime of the telesope. That is just inconceivable. Cables should have been replaced routinely. Any cable with ten years use should have been suspect, no matter how good the maintenance program - and this program was certainly not good.
I'm flabbrgasted. Apparently, a bunch of eggheads presumed that they could properly "maintenance" a plant and facility, never consulting with experienced maintenance people.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Sunday January 17 2021, @05:36PM (3 children)
> The socket design wasn't especially good. I'm not sure what design would have worked
I'd start by looking at what is used on suspension / cable-stayed bridges with spun (multi-stranded) cables - except as far as know they also use a poured socket design.
I also believe the (main catenary) cables are typically painted (along with various other anti-corrosion methods), and on most bridges they are never replaced, if it's ever needed it is a very very big job.
I agree the stuff about fans sounds like voodoo engineering, but I am not actually a civil engineer so maybe it is a kosher technique.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 17 2021, @06:27PM
You prompted a search.
https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/%28ASCE%29CF.1943-5509.0000460 [ascelibrary.org]
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263678327_Suspension_Bridge_Cable_Replacement [researchgate.net]
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/06/30/nyregion/brooklyn-bridge-to-get-new-set-of-steel-cables.html [nytimes.com]
So, cables are replaced on bridges.
That last one was of interest to me, because our ship was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for the bridge's centennial. We donated paint and labor to the project. Of course, we had no part in cable replacements, and I never got close enough to that work to learn anything.
An item from TFA: Arecibo's cables were only ever designed to bear double the load they were expected to carry. Bridges are routinely designed to bear 6 times the expected load.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday January 17 2021, @10:24PM (1 child)
I'm not a CE, ME, materials engineer, etc., but I've done a fair bit of almost everything. From what I saw in that one final failure video, the cables were snapping, and ultimately failed where the cables arced over the main vertical supports. My intuition is that would be a much higher stress point, partly because the cables are curved, so the stresses inside each cable strand are not distributed evenly across a cross section of cable. On the lower side there's some degree of material compression, and on the high side, the arc causes much greater internal tension (pulling) stress, which caused stress fractures. A larger support radius might have helped. I'm sure they considered this in the original design, but over time thermal cycling, motion due to wind, people and equipment moving, would work the cables and slowly form cracks.
An alternate design would involve not arcing the cables, but only use straight sections, with a large forged structure where the towers are with sockets to receive the cable end sockets.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday January 17 2021, @11:03PM
Wish I could remove previous post. I watched the videos again and I see that the cables were NOT arced over the supports, but were in fact straight with end sockets.
Frayed cables very obvious in video.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @05:49PM (2 children)
Lesson learned?
Next time they can use stainless steel aircraft cables and hardware, a modest cost increase, given that the actual cable is a small fraction of the total cost of the project. Not a complete elimination of corrosion, but properly designed a large improvement over other steel cables.
More expensive, but possibly even longer life would be carbon fiber and kevlar cables, although these may also have heat and moisture issues if they are attached with epoxy or other organic glue.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Sunday January 17 2021, @07:30PM
Kevlar ages rapidly, especially when exposed to moisture. Kevlar vests have a short service life, which is why other materials have superceded it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday January 17 2021, @08:13PM
Or perhaps use a similar approach to the Queensferry Crossing [wikipedia.org], a cable-stayed bridge, where any of the individual strands of the cables can be replaced without closing the bridge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 17 2021, @08:46PM (3 children)
Runaway should have showed them the proper way to chip and paint.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 17 2021, @09:22PM (2 children)
I should have been more explicit above. I learned to wipe down wire rope, and OIL IT. Never paint. Paint hides corrosion and damage that you really want to find before the rope fails. Worse, paint seals existing dirt, grit, and moisture inside of the rope. Note the term I'm using: wire rope. The term "cable" is misleading, in that it can make untrained people believe that the rope is similar to the cables used to plug in your USB etc. There are no insulated wires inside a wire rope. No insulation at all, inside, outside, or anywhere in between.
Instead of blowing air into the cable, maybe they should have set up some oil cans to drip into the cables at the top, allowing the oil to find it's way to the bottom. Oil can't harm the rope (unlike humid air), and it may just wash away dirt, grit, and moisture.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Sunday January 17 2021, @10:52PM (1 child)
I like the oil idea. They could possibly have used compressed air to force oil all the way through, the way I rejuvenate a stuck pull cable on a bike or lawnmower- drip oil in, wrap finger around cable + air nozzle, pull trigger.
An additional benefit is it would allow the individual wire strands to move relative to each other, which should reduce the tendency for some of them to have more stress than others.
(Score: 2, Informative) by anubi on Monday January 18 2021, @12:54AM
WD-40. Water Displacer.
I think this stuff would have saved Aricebo had it been applied via mist with the air system. The whole idea of WD-40 is having a light carrier oil wick in, and evaporate, leaving a much heavier water displacing oil behind. Oil does not corrode steel, water does.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday January 17 2021, @10:47PM
I'm not expert at all, but my intuition is that forming loops or bending the cables would weaken them significantly (as I mention in another post here) due to the stretching effect in the outer layers of a wire that's curved.
FTFA, in years since original construction (1997, for example) they added additional cables to support extra equipment that was added to the equipment platform. One of the newer (added) cables was the initial failure last August, which allowed the older main cables to bear more load.
Here's what they found on a replaced cable, and could have been the problem with the failed socket:
Goes on to say an engineering firm recommended replacing all of the added auxiliary cables. Also that in 2007 the cable-drying fans weren't running... TFA is worth the read, or at least skim.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:03AM
Dry is relative. It's vastly better than standing water on those cables.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 18 2021, @04:17AM
When dead things are resurrected, there's always something evil that accompanies their return. That 'something evil' tends to despise humans.