4 ms·

Wow the extent of the damage is surprising. Seems like a pretty big design oversight. If one broken cable can cause such damage, there should be redundancy buil

Wow the extent of the damage is surprising. Seems like a pretty big design oversight. If one broken cable can cause such damage, there should be redundancy built in. One extra cable. "One is none, two is one". From the luxury of my hindsight chair.

dylan604 6y ago
A 3" cable of this type is not an insignificant thing. Have you ever seen the cables used to support telephone poles? Those are maybe 3/8" (working from memory). If you are a teenager running in the dark at full speed at night while attempting to evade being caught papering a friends house and catch one of these cables across your neck, you're going to have a very bad night. I've seen the results. The damage isn't from something failing because there was no other support after this cable failed. It was this failing cable falling back to the ground that did the damage. If it were an object like a rock, it would just drop straight-ish down to make a hole where it impacts. This is a cable that would make that initial impact hole, but would continue to do damage as it was pulled into its final resting spot.
- coolgeek 6y ago
  Oof... I caught one of those phone pole cables on the forehead running in the dark one night, and I caught the guy wire of a soccer net/goal under the chin one day during practice. Both very unpleasant experiences
a5withtrrs 6y ago
There is actually quite a bit of redundancy in place, there are several cables which all still hold the larger instrumentation cluster in place above the dish and are able to tolerate a failure like the one that occurred.
learnstats2 6y ago
This comment suggests that you did not read the article. I will quote some of the key points that you may have missed: 1. "The cable that broke this week was not one of the main support cables but one of several auxiliary ones" 2. "Because it contained a lot of stored energy from tension, it flailed around wildly, damaging the Gregorian dome and the main reflector of the dish" 3. "Typically, such cables don’t fail in that way"
JshWright 6y ago
From your comment, I think your underrstanding is that the cable failed and the section of the dish it was supporting failed due to lack of support. That's not the case... The cable failed, and then the giant cable (with a ton of stored energy due to tension) impacted the dish (as well as some other bits of the antenna).

dylan604 6y ago

A 3" cable of this type is not an insignificant thing. Have you ever seen the cables used to support telephone poles? Those are maybe 3/8" (working from memory). If you are a teenager running in the dark at full speed at night while attempting to evade being caught papering a friends house and catch one of these cables across your neck, you're going to have a very bad night. I've seen the results. The damage isn't from something failing because there was no other support after this cable failed. It was this failing cable falling back to the ground that did the damage. If it were an object like a rock, it would just drop straight-ish down to make a hole where it impacts. This is a cable that would make that initial impact hole, but would continue to do damage as it was pulled into its final resting spot.

coolgeek 6y ago
Oof... I caught one of those phone pole cables on the forehead running in the dark one night, and I caught the guy wire of a soccer net/goal under the chin one day during practice. Both very unpleasant experiences

a5withtrrs 6y ago

There is actually quite a bit of redundancy in place, there are several cables which all still hold the larger instrumentation cluster in place above the dish and are able to tolerate a failure like the one that occurred.

learnstats2 6y ago

This comment suggests that you did not read the article. I will quote some of the key points that you may have missed: 1. "The cable that broke this week was not one of the main support cables but one of several auxiliary ones" 2. "Because it contained a lot of stored energy from tension, it flailed around wildly, damaging the Gregorian dome and the main reflector of the dish" 3. "Typically, such cables don’t fail in that way"

JshWright 6y ago

From your comment, I think your underrstanding is that the cable failed and the section of the dish it was supporting failed due to lack of support. That's not the case... The cable failed, and then the giant cable (with a ton of stored energy due to tension) impacted the dish (as well as some other bits of the antenna).