6 ms·

Is 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

by blhack 6y ago

Is 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 ago
IIRC 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 ago
They 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 ago
  I was wondering about that. The Visitor's Center / Museum there was pretty nice.
dylan604 6y ago
I 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 ago
The 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 ago
We could build an entirely new one from scratch if we decided to manufacture one less F-35.
- WesleyJohnson 6y ago
  Is this accurate? That seems insane.
  - qayxc 6y ago
    It's in the same ballpark. The flyaway cost for domestic units of the F-35 are about $100M. [1] The FAST radio telescope in China cost about $170M. [2] While the Arecibo Telescope is significantly smaller, costs if rebuilt by US contractors would also be much higher than in China. FAST can also only use about 300m of its 500m dish at a time due to limitations with focusing, so its effective size is closer to the Arecibo Telescope than its total size suggests. So make that two F-35 and we're pretty much spot on and we'd have a budget for some 3-5 years of operation, too. [1] https://f35.com/about/cost https://f35.com/about/cost [2] https://phys.org/news/2020-01-china-meter-fast-radio-telescope.html https://phys.org/news/2020-01-china-meter-fast-radio-telesco...
  - josefx 6y ago
    Wikipedia seems to have the unit cost for a F-35 at a hundred million dollars. While I cannot find a number on the construction cost it seems that just running the observatory originally cost around ten million a year. So even if one F-35 was enough to finance a rebuild you would have to drop in a second to keep it running for just a few years.
    - aniro 6y ago
      Curious.. operating cost per annum on the f35 is presumably > $0.
- admiralspoo 6y ago
  Well, the F-35 is actually a useful instrument which maintains US hegemony. A better comparison would be the movie Cats, which had a budget of 95 million, and serves no purpose to society.

by blhack 6y ago

ljp_206 6y ago

IIRC 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 ago

They 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 ago
I was wondering about that. The Visitor's Center / Museum there was pretty nice.

dylan604 6y ago

I 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 ago

The 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 ago

We could build an entirely new one from scratch if we decided to manufacture one less F-35.

WesleyJohnson 6y ago
Is this accurate? That seems insane.
- qayxc 6y ago
  It's in the same ballpark. The flyaway cost for domestic units of the F-35 are about $100M. [1] The FAST radio telescope in China cost about $170M. [2] While the Arecibo Telescope is significantly smaller, costs if rebuilt by US contractors would also be much higher than in China. FAST can also only use about 300m of its 500m dish at a time due to limitations with focusing, so its effective size is closer to the Arecibo Telescope than its total size suggests. So make that two F-35 and we're pretty much spot on and we'd have a budget for some 3-5 years of operation, too. [1] https://f35.com/about/cost https://f35.com/about/cost [2] https://phys.org/news/2020-01-china-meter-fast-radio-telescope.html https://phys.org/news/2020-01-china-meter-fast-radio-telesco...
- josefx 6y ago
  Wikipedia seems to have the unit cost for a F-35 at a hundred million dollars. While I cannot find a number on the construction cost it seems that just running the observatory originally cost around ten million a year. So even if one F-35 was enough to finance a rebuild you would have to drop in a second to keep it running for just a few years.
  - aniro 6y ago
    Curious.. operating cost per annum on the f35 is presumably > $0.
admiralspoo 6y ago
Well, the F-35 is actually a useful instrument which maintains US hegemony. A better comparison would be the movie Cats, which had a budget of 95 million, and serves no purpose to society.