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This is sad. Puerto Rico has already been hit hard so many times. Agree or not, the observatory has a prominent place in pop culture, which helps bring the much

This is sad. Puerto Rico has already been hit hard so many times. Agree or not, the observatory has a prominent place in pop culture, which helps bring the much needed visitors, and with them, awareness of Space Research and Science in general, in a time when sparking interest in STEM in the next generation is so important.

joe_the_user 6y ago
It's tragic. Unfortunately, it's easy to see things like this in terms of a pattern of neglected infrastructure in the US. Puerto Rico in general has been damaged and neglected to a criminal extent - this particular situation will get media attention for a bit, maybe be fixed but that's likely about it.
- mturmon 6y ago
  In this case, it's a complex story. NSF has a collection of astronomical observatories (optical and radio). Some of them have decades-old equipment, and keeping everything operating will eventually preclude building anything new. So, NSF has been trying to offload some older observatories to universities, or consortia of universities - Arecibo is one such. For instance, some older solar observatories were taken offline to build DKIST (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_K._Inouye_Solar_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_K._Inouye_Solar_Telesco...), which is an amazing instrument, just now coming online. Of course, there is a lot of strife and anger caused by reallocation of resources like this.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    I'm on my way to look up DKIST, but after SOHO, it's hard to imagine needing ground based solar observatories. Of course, SOHO will eventually come to end of mission, so we definitely need other observatories. It's just the SOHO imagery is stellar.
    - mturmon 6y ago
      You’re a little out of date! SoHO is largely shut down, has been for a decade now. Its tent pole instruments were replaced by SDO in 2010. (https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/ https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/) Both of these are NASA, not NSF, observatories. They were (SoHO) and are (SDO) amazing resources that have advanced the whole area of heliophysics. DKIST (NSF) has a 4m aperture. Unbelievable for a solar telescope, and of course, impossible to fly under reasonable NASA heliophysics budgets.
  - akiselev 6y ago
    NSF's budget has has been anemic for the last 15+ years so projects get built then the maintenance budget evaporates in favor of some new program dictated by Congressional pork barreling. It wouldn't be a problem if the NSF budget grew at a steady pace, but the budget has only grown when one party has complete control of government and has shrunk otherwise (I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which party is which).
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  > Puerto Rico in general has been damaged and neglected to a criminal extent - this particular situation will get media attention for a bit, maybe be fixed but that's likely about it. Its an issue fraught with peril. Puerto Rico has no statehood, so they're a lesser property within the US as a whole. They have very little economy besides tourism to speak of, enormous amounts of corruption through the various governmental levels, and a populace that is rapidly aging. They plugged budget wholes with debt until it reached levels requiring an independent oversight board stepping in to take over. If you're able to find work on the mainland, you bounce, and only stick around on the island if you can't. I'm not sure what the solution is. You can't write blank checks to a broken government forever. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/puerto-rico-us-territory-crisis https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/puerto-rico-us-territory-cr...
  - karmafish 6y ago
    Tourism is only about 5-7% of Puerto Rico's economy. The majority is pharmaceutical manufacturing and services. It's true there is a lot of corruption. Colonialism seems to select for opportunistic and unprincipled public servants. If you want to learn about the island, I recommend you read War Against All Puerto Ricans by Nelson A. Denis. It does a good job of summarizing Puerto Rico's history with the United States. Best of luck.
    - dan000892 6y ago
      Expanding on Puerto Rico's primary export... Per the FDA, Puerto Rico produced (pre-Maria) $40B of pharmaceuticals for the US alone. 40 of those products and devices were deemed critical as they're the only producer or there's no viable alternative [1]. The largest (in terms of unit count) production was Normal Saline with Baxter's P.R. factory supplying 50% of U.S. hospitals with small volume saline bags (<=250mL as opposed to the more common 1L) prior to Hurricane Maria which took out their production facility [2]. The hurricane is widely credited as the cause of our national saline shortage (though as [2] details, it exacerbated a shortage that already existed for several other reasons). [1] (PDF warning): https://www.fda.gov/media/108975/download https://www.fda.gov/media/108975/download [2]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1800347 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1800347
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  It's okay, we don't need Aracebo. We've got China's FAST - Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Spherical_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Sp... And Russia's RATAN-600 - радиоастрономический телескоп Академии наук – 600, an acronym for the "Academy of Sciences Radio Telescope – 600 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RATAN-600 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RATAN-600
  - billfruit 6y ago
    Speaking of which FAST also illustrates that such dishes are constructed with material/structure that cannot take heavy loads. FAST requires maintenance personnel on the dish surface to be attached to helium balloons so that their weight is reduced during inspection/maintanence related walking on the dish.
  - JshWright 6y ago
    I don't think either FAST or RATAN are capable of radar astronomy (i.e. sending out a strong radio pulse and listening to the reflection). Arecibo's radar capability has led to numerous important discoveries, taught us a great deal about Mercury (including the period of its rotation and the fact that it has ice at its poles), and is still one of the most effective tools we have for examining low albedo solid objects within a few AU of earth (e.g. asteroids). Even without that, Arecibo is still a very capable observatory, and it's not like we have an excess capacity of observatories doing this sort of work. We could have twice as many similar facilities and still keep them all busy.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
a-dub 6y ago
I'd be curious if there were any science outreach programs for kids and adults that were made available to the people in Puerto Rico...

joe_the_user 6y ago

It's tragic. Unfortunately, it's easy to see things like this in terms of a pattern of neglected infrastructure in the US. Puerto Rico in general has been damaged and neglected to a criminal extent - this particular situation will get media attention for a bit, maybe be fixed but that's likely about it.

mturmon 6y ago
In this case, it's a complex story. NSF has a collection of astronomical observatories (optical and radio). Some of them have decades-old equipment, and keeping everything operating will eventually preclude building anything new. So, NSF has been trying to offload some older observatories to universities, or consortia of universities - Arecibo is one such. For instance, some older solar observatories were taken offline to build DKIST (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_K._Inouye_Solar_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_K._Inouye_Solar_Telesco...), which is an amazing instrument, just now coming online. Of course, there is a lot of strife and anger caused by reallocation of resources like this.
- dylan604 6y ago
  I'm on my way to look up DKIST, but after SOHO, it's hard to imagine needing ground based solar observatories. Of course, SOHO will eventually come to end of mission, so we definitely need other observatories. It's just the SOHO imagery is stellar.
  - mturmon 6y ago
    You’re a little out of date! SoHO is largely shut down, has been for a decade now. Its tent pole instruments were replaced by SDO in 2010. (https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/ https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/) Both of these are NASA, not NSF, observatories. They were (SoHO) and are (SDO) amazing resources that have advanced the whole area of heliophysics. DKIST (NSF) has a 4m aperture. Unbelievable for a solar telescope, and of course, impossible to fly under reasonable NASA heliophysics budgets.
- akiselev 6y ago
  NSF's budget has has been anemic for the last 15+ years so projects get built then the maintenance budget evaporates in favor of some new program dictated by Congressional pork barreling. It wouldn't be a problem if the NSF budget grew at a steady pace, but the budget has only grown when one party has complete control of government and has shrunk otherwise (I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out which party is which).
toomuchtodo 6y ago
> Puerto Rico in general has been damaged and neglected to a criminal extent - this particular situation will get media attention for a bit, maybe be fixed but that's likely about it. Its an issue fraught with peril. Puerto Rico has no statehood, so they're a lesser property within the US as a whole. They have very little economy besides tourism to speak of, enormous amounts of corruption through the various governmental levels, and a populace that is rapidly aging. They plugged budget wholes with debt until it reached levels requiring an independent oversight board stepping in to take over. If you're able to find work on the mainland, you bounce, and only stick around on the island if you can't. I'm not sure what the solution is. You can't write blank checks to a broken government forever. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/puerto-rico-us-territory-crisis https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/puerto-rico-us-territory-cr...
- karmafish 6y ago
  Tourism is only about 5-7% of Puerto Rico's economy. The majority is pharmaceutical manufacturing and services. It's true there is a lot of corruption. Colonialism seems to select for opportunistic and unprincipled public servants. If you want to learn about the island, I recommend you read War Against All Puerto Ricans by Nelson A. Denis. It does a good job of summarizing Puerto Rico's history with the United States. Best of luck.
  - dan000892 6y ago
    Expanding on Puerto Rico's primary export... Per the FDA, Puerto Rico produced (pre-Maria) $40B of pharmaceuticals for the US alone. 40 of those products and devices were deemed critical as they're the only producer or there's no viable alternative [1]. The largest (in terms of unit count) production was Normal Saline with Baxter's P.R. factory supplying 50% of U.S. hospitals with small volume saline bags (<=250mL as opposed to the more common 1L) prior to Hurricane Maria which took out their production facility [2]. The hurricane is widely credited as the cause of our national saline shortage (though as [2] details, it exacerbated a shortage that already existed for several other reasons). [1] (PDF warning): https://www.fda.gov/media/108975/download https://www.fda.gov/media/108975/download [2]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1800347 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1800347
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
It's okay, we don't need Aracebo. We've got China's FAST - Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Spherical_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Sp... And Russia's RATAN-600 - радиоастрономический телескоп Академии наук – 600, an acronym for the "Academy of Sciences Radio Telescope – 600 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RATAN-600 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RATAN-600
- billfruit 6y ago
  Speaking of which FAST also illustrates that such dishes are constructed with material/structure that cannot take heavy loads. FAST requires maintenance personnel on the dish surface to be attached to helium balloons so that their weight is reduced during inspection/maintanence related walking on the dish.
- JshWright 6y ago
  I don't think either FAST or RATAN are capable of radar astronomy (i.e. sending out a strong radio pulse and listening to the reflection). Arecibo's radar capability has led to numerous important discoveries, taught us a great deal about Mercury (including the period of its rotation and the fact that it has ice at its poles), and is still one of the most effective tools we have for examining low albedo solid objects within a few AU of earth (e.g. asteroids). Even without that, Arecibo is still a very capable observatory, and it's not like we have an excess capacity of observatories doing this sort of work. We could have twice as many similar facilities and still keep them all busy.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

a-dub 6y ago

I'd be curious if there were any science outreach programs for kids and adults that were made available to the people in Puerto Rico...