6 ms·

What would the cost to rebuild be? Could it be crowd funded?

WJW 4y ago
Some quick googling reveals that it cost 9.3 million in 1963, so inflation adjusted that would be about 100 million today. Not completely out of the realm of crowdfunding, but it would probably quicker to send a tweet to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos and offer them to name it the "Jeff Bezos Arecibo Telescope" or somesuch if they fund the reconstruction by themselves.
- pavlov 4y ago
  Show Elon the 1974 Arecibo message and explain that it’s like an interstellar tweet, and for a mere $100 million he’ll be able to send those himself. Honestly sounds like a bargain compared to his recent tweet spending habits.
  - closewith 4y ago
    > Show Elon the 1974 Arecibo message and explain that it’s like an interstellar tweet, and for a mere $100 million he’ll be able to send those himself. Or just show him Goldeneye. I feel he'd be more likely to do it for the meme.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- bpodgursky 4y ago
  The cost disease for infrastructure has expanded dramatically faster than inflation and I really doubt you could do this for less than $2B today. Unless you get a magic "no environmental review" exception (you won't).
  - lupire 4y ago
    PR doesn't have the powerful NIMBY culture that California does. Folks there are less wealthy and more practical about the value of adding local economic investment.
    - elzbardico 4y ago
      A lot of construction costs are also related to the insurance, specially against liabilities, financial costs and other, non-enviromental costs. Even if you're building a more amicable jurisdiction, those costs cascade down from your upstream supply chain.
    - bpodgursky 4y ago
      True overall, but it still only takes one Sierra Club to gum it up in court for years. It's not like the neighborhood can vote to override federal courts.
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  Chinese tax breaks, and no piss-breaks for the workers could help pay, too.
- greenbit 4y ago
  Maybe with an offer to be top of the list of who gets notified when the aliens are first detected ..
- dotnet00 4y ago
  I think that more than the reconstruction there probably isn't any will to pay for operations or maintenance anymore (after all, this probably wouldn't have happened in the first place if maintenance was better). So even if any billionaires decided to foot the bill, the issue would remain that a long term commitment to supporting the facility is also needed, and while short term large expenditures are tolerable to most rich companies and individuals, the long term commitment with no clear end or outcome is probably the limiter.
yardstick 4y ago
Sell/auction off pieces from the original telescope and use that to help fund the replacement? Or somehow convince Elon to buy it…
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jnsaff2 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33232914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33232914
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
unethical_ban 4y ago
It's frustrating that isn't addressed in the article. Does Arecibo do more than other comparable telescopes? Or will science and humanity go on? Is it worth the billion, or $200m, or whatever, to rebuild in the name of science?
- lupire 4y ago
  Pretty clearly not. It's natural advantage has faded over time as tech progressed. It's value would mainly be to show that we can afford to do some luxury science and local science, and be a focal point for Puerto Rico, which isn't necessarily bad. If PR had representation in Congress, Arecibo rebuild would be an easy pork barrel project.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    We have no other filled aperture radiotelescope of comparable area, with transmit capability. Filled aperture matters. The only comparable telescope is the Chinese FAST radiotelescope, which is somewhat larger in diameter but without all the capabilities (and, you know. Being in China.).
    - krapht 4y ago
      > Filled aperture matters. Could say the exact opposite... sparse synthetic apertures are more cost-efficient.
      - Robotbeat 4y ago
        Totally depends on what you’re trying to do. Arecibo was used in transmit mode, too, for studying asteroids, etc. and the “thinned array curse” hits you hard if you don’t have a filled array for transmission as most of your energy ends up in sidelobes, not the central beam. Plus, sparse array only works well for high contrast, high brightness sources. And it has a bunch of artifacts that can get in the way of interpretation of the data. Plus just pure filled area matters a lot.
- 4y ago

WJW 4y ago

Some quick googling reveals that it cost 9.3 million in 1963, so inflation adjusted that would be about 100 million today. Not completely out of the realm of crowdfunding, but it would probably quicker to send a tweet to Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos and offer them to name it the "Jeff Bezos Arecibo Telescope" or somesuch if they fund the reconstruction by themselves.

pavlov 4y ago
Show Elon the 1974 Arecibo message and explain that it’s like an interstellar tweet, and for a mere $100 million he’ll be able to send those himself. Honestly sounds like a bargain compared to his recent tweet spending habits.
- closewith 4y ago
  > Show Elon the 1974 Arecibo message and explain that it’s like an interstellar tweet, and for a mere $100 million he’ll be able to send those himself. Or just show him Goldeneye. I feel he'd be more likely to do it for the meme.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bpodgursky 4y ago
The cost disease for infrastructure has expanded dramatically faster than inflation and I really doubt you could do this for less than $2B today. Unless you get a magic "no environmental review" exception (you won't).
- lupire 4y ago
  PR doesn't have the powerful NIMBY culture that California does. Folks there are less wealthy and more practical about the value of adding local economic investment.
  - elzbardico 4y ago
    A lot of construction costs are also related to the insurance, specially against liabilities, financial costs and other, non-enviromental costs. Even if you're building a more amicable jurisdiction, those costs cascade down from your upstream supply chain.
  - bpodgursky 4y ago
    True overall, but it still only takes one Sierra Club to gum it up in court for years. It's not like the neighborhood can vote to override federal courts.
InCityDreams 4y ago
Chinese tax breaks, and no piss-breaks for the workers could help pay, too.
greenbit 4y ago
Maybe with an offer to be top of the list of who gets notified when the aliens are first detected ..
dotnet00 4y ago
I think that more than the reconstruction there probably isn't any will to pay for operations or maintenance anymore (after all, this probably wouldn't have happened in the first place if maintenance was better). So even if any billionaires decided to foot the bill, the issue would remain that a long term commitment to supporting the facility is also needed, and while short term large expenditures are tolerable to most rich companies and individuals, the long term commitment with no clear end or outcome is probably the limiter.

yardstick 4y ago

Sell/auction off pieces from the original telescope and use that to help fund the replacement? Or somehow convince Elon to buy it…

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jnsaff2 4y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33232914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33232914

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

unethical_ban 4y ago

It's frustrating that isn't addressed in the article. Does Arecibo do more than other comparable telescopes? Or will science and humanity go on? Is it worth the billion, or $200m, or whatever, to rebuild in the name of science?

lupire 4y ago
Pretty clearly not. It's natural advantage has faded over time as tech progressed. It's value would mainly be to show that we can afford to do some luxury science and local science, and be a focal point for Puerto Rico, which isn't necessarily bad. If PR had representation in Congress, Arecibo rebuild would be an easy pork barrel project.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  We have no other filled aperture radiotelescope of comparable area, with transmit capability. Filled aperture matters. The only comparable telescope is the Chinese FAST radiotelescope, which is somewhat larger in diameter but without all the capabilities (and, you know. Being in China.).
  - krapht 4y ago
    > Filled aperture matters. Could say the exact opposite... sparse synthetic apertures are more cost-efficient.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      Totally depends on what you’re trying to do. Arecibo was used in transmit mode, too, for studying asteroids, etc. and the “thinned array curse” hits you hard if you don’t have a filled array for transmission as most of your energy ends up in sidelobes, not the central beam. Plus, sparse array only works well for high contrast, high brightness sources. And it has a bunch of artifacts that can get in the way of interpretation of the data. Plus just pure filled area matters a lot.
4y ago