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Drone Footage of Arecibo Observatory Collapse
- wyldfire 6y agoThe clip has two different vantage points, skip to the middle of the clip for the closeup where you can see the supports/guys snapping.
- zaroth 6y agoSeems like they knew exactly where it was going to fail.
- yborg 6y agoAnd they must have known it was imminent, it seems unlikely they had a drone over it 24/7 given the available hover time.
- luisjv 6y agoThey were doing hourly inspections of the structure ever since the report came out a couple of weeks ago.
- jakub_g 6y agoOn the bottom of the linked page there's a press release from last month: one cable failed in August, then another a few weeks later at 60% of expected of load, and they decided on Nov19 it's unsafe to fix it and it should be decommissionned. https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=301674&org=NSF&from=news https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=301674&org=NS...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- usrusr 6y agoFor a use case like this, I'd imagine that tethered multicopters could be a very nice fit. If you can just plug the base station into a power outlet, suddenly 24/7 doesn't seem that crazy. PS: Apparently I'm not alone with this idea, search engine comes up with hits. https://elistair.com/ https://elistair.com/ even have a tether kit you can plug into some DJI models (and others) instead of the conventional battery pack. Out of Lyon, France, nice!
- libria 6y agoBonus, if they tethered it to the suspended receiver, it would automatically follow the action right down to impact, albeit with unpredictable viewing angles.
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoThey could use a spherical/360 camera and correct the viewing angle in post.
- JshWright 6y agoI attended several BLM events this past summer and local law enforcement had a couple tethered drones up in the area.
- sm4rk0 6y agoPlease decide, Lyon or Nice?
- nuccy 6y agoYes. The drone was accessing the tower where cable has snapped before, so other cables there were under highest load. The fact that drone was there in the "right" moment likely just a coincidence, probability of which was increased by the hourly inspections.
- sasvari 6y agodirect link to the video: http://players.brightcove.net/679256133001/EkLWnGuil_default/index.html?videoId=6213883083001 http://players.brightcove.net/679256133001/EkLWnGuil_default...
- Jaruzel 6y agoCopy of video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU6YYTp72To https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU6YYTp72To
- llacb47 6y agoIt's your copy of the video
- Jaruzel 6y agoIt is, but I don't get anything from hosting it, It's not monetised. I kept getting timeouts on the actual site, and the sharing URL was nasty long (I wanted to share it to friends). I did credit them in the video description. I was only trying to help.
- faeyanpiraat 6y agoNothing wrong with increasing availability of worthwile materials, thanks for putting in the work!
- llacb47 6y agoNo problem, I just thought it was a pertinent piece of information. Next time I'll keep it to myself I guess.
- forgotmypw17 6y agooriginal had drm
- Throwaway1771 6y agoLet's kill him.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ggerules 6y agoThank you for posting this.
- lgrebe 6y agoWhy were they filming? As in why was the drone in place and looking at a close-up of the cable?
- wil421 6y agoI’m sure everything has been creaking and making noise. They probably went up inspect it. I can see a few frayed cables before it starts to give way.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rootusrootus 6y agoWasn't it expected to fail at any moment? I imagine they've been watching pretty closely with drones for the last few days/weeks.
- fanf2 6y agoThe press release from last week https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=301674&org=NSF&from=news https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=301674&org=NS... says: “During ongoing aerial drone surveillance of the Arecibo Observatory’s 305-meter telescope, engineers observed additional breakages on the exterior wires of the remaining cables attached to Tower 4. This is the same tower to which the failed auxiliary cable and the broken main cable were attached.” “Engineers have been examining the Arecibo Observatory 305-meter telescope since August, when one of its support cables detached.”
- dvtrn 6y agoTo aid in future investigations of the structural failures I would imagine? As I understand it from reading various news reports and a video from one Scott Manley, the damage from the recent earthquake had this collapse in the “when” column not “if”.
- dylan604 6y agoJust squeezing one last bit of science out of the place. Sure, it's not the science it was designed to for, but science none-the-less
- woeirua 6y agoIs the loss of Arecibo a big blow to the scientific community? I was of the impression that Arecibo was long past it's heyday and in general that large arrays of smaller receivers were now considered superior.
- spenczar5 6y agoI work at UW astronomy. It’s mostly symbolic. The main capability loss is that Arecibo was able to transmit, which is unique at its size. As an example, that was useful to rescue the ISEE-3 explorer when it passed through a comet trail in the 1980s. Only Arecibo was powerful enough to blast a radio message through the comet trail. (PDF reference: https://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-84/84T.PDF https://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-84/84T.PDF) Arecibo was certainly still used actively, but it’s not the only observatory in its class - its not like the LHC or Hubble blowing up or something.
- _verandaguy 6y agoAsking as a non-astronomer: my understanding is that other telescopes in this class are synthetic/multiple aperture, and not single-aperture like Arecibo (with a small number of exceptions, like FAST). Is there any science you can do on extremely-large single-aperture telescopes that you can't do on comparable synthetic/multiple aperture telescopes?
- lambda_obrien 6y agoArecibo was initially built to excite plasma balls in the atmosphere to study them, and was also used for other transmitter uses that required a super powerful transmitter, initially designed for that plasma use.
- jiofih 6y agoBuilt to “excite plasma balls” sounds like it would be creating plasma balls if it’s own. It was used as a scatter radar to study plasma in the upper atmosphere.
- solarkraft 6y agoWow. As tragic as the collapse is, at least it has been filmed (i thought it had not when I saw the announcement tweet with its far-away photo). If nothing else it's about as spectacular as I had expected. Had I been in the area I'd have been tempted to set up my camera somewhere close (remember that the risk of collapse was known to be high).
- worker767424 6y ago346 people dying in 737 MAX crashes is tragic. This is a 50-year-old telescope; the word I'd use is "unfortunate."
- blhack 6y agoIs there any chance at all that this gets rebuilt? Is anybody even putting the costs requirements together to do it, or is this just a total loss? This is so unbelievably sad to see. It reminds me of seeing Notre Dame burning last year.
- ljp_206 6y agoIIRC it was a total loss by the time the first cable broke. With the collapse, at least the structure is now safe to approach and begin scrapping/full deconstruction.
- sp332 6y agoThey barely had funding to do maintenance. There's no money to build a whole new one. The NSF is under contract to return the site to its original natural state. (I can't find a recent source for this but it's mentioned in https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/search-for-alien-life-ignites-battle-over-giant-telescope/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/search-for-alien-... )
- mcguire 6y agoI was wondering about that. The Visitor's Center / Museum there was pretty nice.
- dylan604 6y agoI think it has 2 chances: Slim and none, but slim just left town. Then again, it could have a snowball's chance in hell. However, those all imply a > 0% chance which I honestly believe to be way too high.
- lotu 6y agoThe only way I see that happening is if we can get congress to allocate funding for a new one. It would be seen as widely popular move so I don't think there is zero chance, but it would take a concerted publicity effort
- outworlder 6y agoWe could build an entirely new one from scratch if we decided to manufacture one less F-35.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoI wonder whats going on with the cable when it fails. It seems to be snapping/frays at first, but then it seems like it was pulled out of its base
- jeffbee 6y agoWhy not both? At first a few strands of one cable are snapping. Then the remaining strands break altogether. Then the remaining cables also break. Finally, one of the towers fails because it's designed to take a vertical load and suddenly it is supporting a net horizontal load.
- sp332 6y agoThe anchor is made by unraveling the strands, covering them in concrete, and wedging the solid block in a cone-shaped opening so it can't pull out. One of the other cables also failed at its anchor, which is really not supposed to happen, so maybe something similar happened here. One or two strands managed to pull out of the block individually, leaving enough room for the rest to pull out in one piece?
- dylan604 6y agoThere is a lot LOT LOT of tension on these cables. So if something seemingly small snaps, then the strength of the rest of the cable is compromised. Each of the strands in the cable is rated for a specific amount of weight/tension. I'm sure there was some tolerance/over-engineering in the amount the cables could support, but as the individual strands started to pop, it was only a matter of time. >seems like it was pulled out of its base That's pretty much what happened. All of that weight on the cable pulled it away from its support structure on that tower. Gravity did the rest.
- stefan_ 6y agoWhat a time to be alive, definitely watch past the initial grainy CCTV footage for the HD drone closeup of the cable supports snapping.
- briancp 6y agoPosted this in another thread, but there’s some neat photos from the 60s of the telescope under construction here: https://www.naic.edu/history_gal/historicgal.html https://www.naic.edu/history_gal/historicgal.html Beyond the scientific value, it is (was) just a neat feat of engineering getting this built in the middle of the jungle.
- themodelplumber 6y agoAdding some other materials: SETI@home Arecibo Observatory documentary, 2012 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX4PZ-fW2YA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX4PZ-fW2YA An Insider's Tour of the Arecibo Observatory, July 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQJawfbjpxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQJawfbjpxw _Stare-Way to Heaven_, 73 Magazine article, August 1984 (page 34) https://archive.org/details/73-magazine-1984-08/ https://archive.org/details/73-magazine-1984-08/ Arecibo story from NASA Special Report 223 Cassette, June 1983 (Starts at 14:48) https://archive.org/details/NASA223/NASA+223+cleaned-levelated.wav https://archive.org/details/NASA223/NASA+223+cleaned-levelat...
- keeganpoppen 6y agowow those pics are incredible; must have been a hell of a sight to put up. although, i guess that's true of a lot of the public works-y sorts of things we did in the 40s-70s (not that this really technically counts, probably, but whatever).
- ilamont 6y agoThe instrument platform was listed at 900 tons. The maximum takeoff weight of a Boeing 787 is just over 500,000 pounds, or 250 tons ... is it fair to say the instrument platform was the equivalent of three fully loaded 787s, plus two M1A1 tanks piled on for good measure? That's a lot of weight for those cables to support.
- blake8086 6y agoI always think it's funny when people use large planes as a reference for heavy weights, since they're designed to be as light as possible for the volume.
- waiseristy 6y agoProbably best to compare Arecibo to a suspension bridge instead
- est31 6y agoGolden Gate bridge is 887 000 tons: https://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/01/us/golden-gate-bridge-fast-facts/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/01/us/golden-gate-bridge-fas... So around 1000 times as heavy.
- azdle 6y agoThat sounds like the weight of the whole thing, not just the suspended part.
- radicaldreamer 6y agoI think the Golden Gate Bridge is massively overengineered (although nobody really knows) because materials engineering wasn’t super advanced back then.
- twic 6y agoI don't think the instrument platform was exactly designed to be heavy!
- carapace 6y agoSagan wept.
- shadowgovt 6y agoI mean, Dr. Sagan has passed on. But I hope Ann Druyan's taking it okay.
- dylan604 6y agoSo now, humans are going to be the intergalactic assholes of the universe who go and change their phone number without leaving a forwarding number. When our message sent from Arecibo is finally received, their response will go to a disconnected number. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BVbyCZXc5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BVbyCZXc5s
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago"now" is doing a lot of work here... If I'm not mistaken, we have about a millennium or a hundred make arrangements.
- dylan604 6y agothe lack of interest in funding Arecibo at a level to even do maintenance to prevent this from happening suggests we won't bother within that millennium you are allowing.
- macksd 6y agoWould normal maintenance have prevented this? My understanding from the initial reports is that they were unable to identify any flaw or anomaly in the steel cable that snapped that would have indicated the problem ahead of time, and that it simply wasn't designed to tolerate a failure of that nature. Sounds like a freak accident to me.
- est31 6y agoOverall it's quite a bright time for (radio) astronomy. The number of telescopes and sensing ability only increases with time. Just this year alone, a large clone of Arecibo, FAST, just became fully operational. Other telescopes like the SKA are still in construction. In the future decades, we'll likely build even more and even larger telescopes.
- sandworm101 6y agoFAST is not a clone. It is a very big and powerful dish, but Arecibo could do things that FAST cannot (radar astronomy). Just like particle accelerators, no two telescopes are ever identical in capabilities/missions. FASTs other difference is location: China. The community of people who would work at Arecibo is probably very different than the community that will work at FAST.
- geocrasher 6y agoWow, it looks like Scott Manley's assessment of the failure was spot on. Incredible footage, and equally incredible that they caught it on drone in such high detail!
- CamperBob2 6y agoOuch. If there's a video more representative of 2020 than this one, I haven't seen it, and don't want to.
- garaetjjte 6y agoBeirut explosion?
- s0rce 6y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so-FcHTWEIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so-FcHTWEIY
- jpswade 6y agoWas this place used in Golden eye? It looks familiar.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throwaway29303 6y agoYes. It's from Contact[0] as well. Great movie. [0] - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/
- pintxo 6y agoyes
- garaetjjte 6y agoYes. Also in Contact. And you could blow it up in Battlefield 4.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 51Cards 6y agoSo they had a drone focused right on the cable that snapped? I got the impression from the early articles that it collapsed during the night and wasn't witnessed.
- teraflop 6y agoThe collapse happened around 7:55AM local time, about an hour after sunrise. It happened "overnight" (before dawn) as far as most people in the continental US were concerned.
- ocdtrekkie 6y agoI mean, if I was in charge of monitoring the thing, I feel like I'd have a cheap webcam pointed at it at minimum.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoSad event. Cool footage.
- corey_moncure 6y agoWhere did these cables come from?
- inetsee 6y agoFrom a company that manufactures cables for bridges?
- awiesenhofer 6y agoSo if they knew there is no money to even maintain it and this collapse was a likely outcome why not lower the platform in advance before any cable breaks? Just from a safety perspective omitting this seems to be somewhat negligent, no?
- AlgorithmicTime 6y agoLower it to where? It would crush the reflective dish.
- Gene5ive 6y agoThey were about to. I'm pretty sure they were using the drone to get ahead of that problem. Seems like it happened to fast.
- latchkey 6y agoHow do you safely lower a platform that might break at any point?
- masklinn 6y agoI'm not sure it was possible, the cables were likely anchored (frayed then sunk in concrete), it would have required setting up a mobile anchor, cutting the cable from the anchor, adding lengths of cables somehow, and unspooling those extra lengths. It's already not done for suspension bridges[0], I don't think it could be done here. And the risk would obviously have been gigantic as two cables had already snapped in the same place, so the remaining cables would be under insane and completely out of spec tensions, meaning they could fail at any point during the tentative transfer work. [0] you either splay open the main cables and replace strands, or you need to jack the entire bridge from below to take down and replace the main cables at once
- robocat 6y agoQuick google: Presently, cable replacement designs are being developed for three suspension bridges in the United States. All three are important river crossings at or near a major metropolitan area and must remain open to traffic during construction. These cable replacement designs will need to overcome myriad difficulties, including cable support at the existing tower tops and placement of new anchorages within restricted available spaces. Alternatives will include placing the new cables above or adjacent to the existing ones. The construction procedures and load transfer sequencing is a critical part of the design. The new cables will need to be erected in their free position and will undergo substantial deformations as the load is transferred to them. Additionally, the existing cables and towers will undergo their own deformations, as will the bridge superstructure as it is released from the old and supported by the new suspension system. The work will require extensible hangers to accomplish the load transfer, and all operations must be coordinated to limit changes in the roadway geometry and stresses in the superstructure, towers and suspension components.
- neom 6y agoScott Manley synced up the footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSSrEowtIOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSSrEowtIOo
- modeless 6y agoA very similar event was depicted in Battlefield 4, surprisingly accurately as it turns out: https://youtu.be/KiOQdVvGdQE?t=38 https://youtu.be/KiOQdVvGdQE?t=38
- xster 6y agoThat's how <25 year old spoiler> how 006 died too </spoiler> https://youtu.be/wGmDAjRRNXs?t=160 https://youtu.be/wGmDAjRRNXs?t=160 Surprisingly inaccurate and led me to think up until today that the reflector dish was a concrete bowl rather than a metal mesh.
- jessriedel 6y agoCan anyone please characterize that accent/cadence to me?!? It reminds me very strongly of an accent I've been hearing on tech support telephone call frequently in the past 5 years but never recalled hearing before that. I have a pet theory that it's actually from a new technique for more rapidly teaching intelligible English pronunciation to folks learning it as a second language. But maybe it's just an accent from a region that only recently started hosting lots of tech support calls?
- zandor 6y agoDutch.
- ehnto 6y agoSounds like a Northern to North Eastern European accent to me. But I will say that YouTubers have their own accents that permeate different genres of videos as well, which can add ambiguity. My favourite accent tidbit is the English voice of the Shinkansen in Japan. It is voiced by an Australian, imitating a Canadian, who was imitating a British accent. The result is a totally ambiguous accent that sounds almost disconnected from geography. I say that as an Australian with a british twang.
- kyberias 6y agoI had no idea.
- gorgoiler 6y agoGosh, I really lacked a sense of scale until I saw the B roll footage of a human walking around the central gantry. This thing was enormous.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoAre they going to clean that up? Is "decommissioning" just a fancy word for "leaving a big pile of garbage in the woods?"
- jacurtis 6y agoWell it is operated by the National Science Foundation. So we can hope that they have an interest in preserving the forest floor below. But then again, with budget cuts and the decreasing budgets that science and climate organizations have been getting from the government lately, this is entirely possible.
- mulmen 6y agoThe 2020 NSF budget is the second highest since 1951, inflation adjusted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25273623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25273623 https://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/NSFRqstAppropHist/NSFRequestsandAppropriationsHistory.pdf https://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/NSFRqstAppropHist/NSFRequestsand...
- lovecg 6y agoImagine if it stays as is. A ruin of a former empire, something for future historians to explore.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y agoGiven the age of the structure, I would expect it to be full of lead and asbestos. Also try to tone down the hubris, Ozymandias.
- s0rce 6y agoAnother comment above says the NSF is contracted to return the site to its natural state and that since the collapse it is safer to enter the structure and begin removal.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
- dheera 6y agoWhat's up with that dude walking on the center catwalk before it collapsed?
- dang 6y agoPrevious threads of this story: 2 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25264555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25264555 14 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25151342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25151342 23 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25045573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25045573 3 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24149346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24149346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128877
- dukeofdoom 6y agoHave there been any UFO sightings nearby?...I just love alien conspiracy theories.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoAnd every time I see it, my heart aches for the science. RIP Arecibo, you did not deserve this fate.
- valuearb 6y agoWhy not? Should we pour money into antiquated and inefficient designs at the expense of newer designs that will be far more effective?
- mulmen 6y agoNo but Arecibo was an icon and a valuable instrument in its time. A more dignified fate was deserved.
- ajford 6y agoThat's the rub. Yes it wasn't a streamline design, but rather the result of a series of upgrades over the decades, but it was still producing important and meaningful science. A full refit of Arecibo (obviously while it was still in one piece of course) would have likely been much cheaper than building an entirely new telescope.
- AlexGood 6y agoGravity
- sideshowb 6y agoFor England, James?
- areoform 6y agoIt feels like the death of American ingenuity. We've fallen from the era where we sent echoes to our neighbours and the stars. When we found clearings in jungles and turned them into monuments to humanity. The time when we put our best foot forward and reached ahead, into the future, racing towards a brighter tomorrow for humanity. I mourn for what has been lost. The American century wasn't punctuated by a war, but by callous neo-mercantilism and disregard. The fall of America's aspirations from the heavens to the bottom of a sinkhole.
- cal5k 6y agoYou're joking, right? 2020 is a year where SpaceX flew humans to space for the first time ever on a commercial vehicle, we created and started to distribute a vaccine for a never-before-seen virus in under a year, and we began to hook rural people who've never had access to high-quality internet up via a constellation of thousands of micro-satellites in LEO. Sure, not everything is rosy, but we're still capable of some impressive feats of engineering. Oh, and AlphaFold made an incredible leap in protein folding prediction. Like, a true "paradigm shift" in one of the most historically intractable problems in biology.
- zx14 6y agoIf you want to assign countries to companies or divisions of companies, I think Deepmimd is (still) more representative of British ingenuity.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago> I think Deepmimd is (still) more representative of British ingenuity. It’s kind of like the strategy in World War II: combine British ingenuity (DeepMind) with America. resources(Google).
- sho_hn 6y agoTechnology-wise, the vaccine you mean was developed in Germany by a German company. Pfizer is the manufacturing partner and did logistics for clinical trials (except in China, where Fosun licensed it). $445 million in funding came as a grant from the German government, the rest from licensors. The German government has split another ~300 million or so on two other companies also working on vaccines. The US government did not contribute any funding to Pfizer's license. I'd rather say it's a cool example of international collab and winning together than an American exceptionalism narrative ...
- hammock 6y agoThat thing weighs 900 tons. Why is it so heavy?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- alacombe 6y agoSteel is pretty heavy... 1T is merely a 1m * 1m * 12.5cm slab.
- jcranmer 6y agoTo be fair, if you have a 12.5cm slab of steel, you're probably doing something wrong. Or trying to build battleship armor. Steel beams will have a thickness of ~1cm steel at most, and steel plates will usually be much thinner.
- mnouquet 6y ago> Steel beams will have a thickness of ~1cm steel at most Your idea of the world is pretty limited... Any beams above S8x23 / W12x53 (ie. the bottom of the beam tables) will have a web above 3/8".
- dredmorbius 6y agoIt is, well, was, enormous. The rectangular blocklike structure above the left side of the ring in this image is a roughly 8 ft x 8 ft x 20 ft (2.5m x 2.5m x 7m) shack. There might be a few humans in the frame though they're difficult to distinguish from equipment. The long structure descending off to the right is a gantry / catwalk. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Arecibo_radio_telescope_SJU_06_2019_6144.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Arecibo_... To the right here: https://www.ucf.edu/news/files/2018/02/ucf-arecibo-3.jpg https://www.ucf.edu/news/files/2018/02/ucf-arecibo-3.jpg There are three people visible on the lower level here, directly below the stairs descending from the shack: http://patriciadrichards.com/galleries/puertorico/arecibo-observatory.jpg http://patriciadrichards.com/galleries/puertorico/arecibo-ob... A construction photo. Behind the platform (upper left) is a bulldozer. https://www.naic.edu/history_gal/jun151962.jpg https://www.naic.edu/history_gal/jun151962.jpg Full description: http://naic.edu/ao/telescope-description http://naic.edu/ao/telescope-description
- dredmorbius 6y agoAn hour-long tour of the dish and platform, from 2014, gives a sense of scale. And aging. https://youtube.com/watch?v=N3lCL5oPVwo https://youtube.com/watch?v=N3lCL5oPVwo
- overcast 6y agoSo many hours logged on that map in Battlefield 4 <3
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- homero 6y agoIs this what was in the old James Bond game on N64? Never knew it was real
- aejnsn 6y agoI didn’t hear Sean Bean’s character screaming in the footage this time.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- killjoywashere 6y agoAnybody want to start increasing government R&D funding yet?
- mulmen 6y agoThis came up in a recent thread on this topic. I was surprised to learn that NSF funding has actually increased basically continuously since 1951. 2020 is the second highest funding level ever. The loss of Arecibo is painful and we have certainly lost capability but it isn't as bad as it looks. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25273623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25273623 https://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/NSFRqstAppropHist/NSFRequestsandAppropriationsHistory.pdf https://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/NSFRqstAppropHist/NSFRequestsand...
- hughw 6y agoArecibo was an inside job.
- iab 6y agoHow remarkably fitting for this year.
- bradgessler 6y agoIf they’re just going to scrap the dish, it would be cool to own a piece of it. Anybody know if that’s possible?
- jwmoz 6y agoOk I'm watching Goldeneye tonight.
- furyg3 6y agoSo how much is it going to cost to completely clean up the structure as compared to how much it would have cost to properly maintain it?
- parski 6y agoThis is what I'm wondering as well. Who is in charge of cleaning this up and restoring the gaping wound in this ecosystem?
- ajford 6y agoNSF is responsible for the site restoration, which is one of the reasons NSF wanted to "divest" (transfer ownership). The last EPA study from a few years back had an estimate of something near $100 Million USD (roughly 10yrs of operating budget for AO prior to collapse).
- brnt 6y agoCan't help but think of post-Soviet installations in eastern Europe. Sometimes you can see empires literally falling apart.
- lightlyused 6y agoInterview with Angel Vazquez Arecibo head of telescope operations (12/4/2020 about 4:30pm et). https://fb.watch/2at81vTtpf/ https://fb.watch/2at81vTtpf/