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The thing is, even by rebuilding Arecibo the US (or more specifically, the NSF) would no longer own the largest radio telescope. China's 500m telescope [1] is a

The thing is, even by rebuilding Arecibo the US (or more specifically, the NSF) would no longer own the largest radio telescope. China's 500m telescope [1] is already operational and while there are some minor differences when it comes to frequency range and field of view, there isn't much to justify the expenditure for another telescope in the US beyond mere political indulgences. From a strictly science based point of view, a new Arecibo is very hard to sell considering the implied costs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Spherical_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Sp...

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
How much does it cost? I see it was built for $9.3M in 1960. Now they're estimating the cleanup cost alone to be $50M. Inflation adjusted - it should cost ~$95M to re-build. I'm not sure how if you'd need to include the total $50M cleanup on top of that. Either way - if it can be re-built for $95M - that seems like a better deal than spending $50M to clean it up.
- jws 4y ago
  There are 38,000 1mx2m perforated aluminum panels out there. I would pay a nice premium for them as a wall covering. Maybe not $50m/38000, but a good chunk of that. Having a section of the iconic telescope would be worth it. Now, are there thousands of people like me to make it work at scale?
- cma 4y ago
  Need to adjust for Puerto Rico's change in something like purchasing power parity since then, not just US inflation, depending on the mix of labor that was involved.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  It is a big fiddly science instrument that requires constant maintenance, the benefit of cleanup is to get rid of that obligation. If we want to turn it into a museum or something, that might be worth considering. But that will require getting it into a safe state which is presumably lots of the cleanup cost.
- echelon 4y ago
  $50M is a lot to spend for nothing. Can't the site just be fenced off (assuming it doesn't contaminate groundwater or endanger in-use facilities)? If a private developer wants to take it over and turn it into a tourist destination, let them spend their own money. Throw them some tax incentives, maybe. $95M would be a great deal to new science projects. India put an orbiter around Mars for less. We could start studying a distributed array approach to whatever comes after JWST.
  - nullc 4y ago
    The cost of cleanup (which includes restoring the forrest to its natural state) is really what kept it running for a long time-- basically within the budget horizon it was cheaper to keep it running at limp-along levels (which presumably contributed to the failure) than to shut it down. I've long assumed that complete restoration being an assumed mandatory consequence of shutdown was itself a successful gambit from parties that wanted to keep the instrument operational. :)
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      Why does it need to be cleaned up? I thought telescope mirrors had to be absurdly pure. It seems like it would make for a super cool museum.
      - nullc 4y ago
        Arecibo was a radio telescope, like a satellite dish. The 'mirror' is a great big metal mesh hemisphere covering 18 acres of land in a mountain valley. It's not an ideal museum location in and of itself because it's almost an hour drive out of the city across some not-sutiable-for-high-traffic mountain roads (see the beginning of the movie Contact for a pretty reasonable view of what the trip out and in is like). Presumably the idea is that if we go around building stuff and just abandoning it we're doing unnecessary harm to nature as well as creating hazardous environments, e.g. when people go in to take the scrap metal and have stuff collapse on them.
      - haneefmubarak 4y ago
shagie 4y ago
The 500m telescope lacks transmitters - this is an important distinction. > Fifth, Arecibo's larger secondary platform also housed several transmitters, making it one of only two instruments in the world capable of radar astronomy. ... The NASA-funded Planetary Radar System allowed Arecibo to study solid objects from Mercury to Saturn, and to perform very accurate orbit determination on near-earth objects, particularly potentially hazardous objects. China's 500m telescope wouldn't be able to capture https://www.planetary.org/space-images/radar-images-of-asteroid https://www.planetary.org/space-images/radar-images-of-aster... because it can't send a pulse. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010DPS....42.1317B/abstract https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010DPS....42.1317B/abstra... > We report Arecibo (2380 MHz, 13 cm) and Goldstone (8560 MHz, 3.5 cm) delay-Doppler radar observations of binary near-Earth asteroid (NEA) 65803 Didymos (1996 GT) obtained on five dates between November 14-26, 2003 during the asteroid's approach within 0.048 AU. You'll note the Goldstone mention there and the "making it one of only two instruments in the world" from the wiki link on the 500 meter article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy > There is one remaining radar astronomy facility in regular use, the Goldstone Solar System Radar.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  Thanks for a substantive and well-sourced comment. There is a comment lower down saying Green Bank might add radar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33233119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33233119 I’m not in a position to confirm whether that is true though.
  - shagie 4y ago
    https://greenbankobservatory.org/future-of-earths-defense-is-ground-based-planetary-radar/ https://greenbankobservatory.org/future-of-earths-defense-is... > The National Science Foundation has awarded funds for the conceptual design of a higher-power radar system on the GBT – one that would be nearly 1,000 times more powerful than the proof of concept. In addition to a more powerful transmitter, NRAO and GBO, working with industry partners, will leverage new, solid-state amplifier and array receiving-system technologies to maximize the effectiveness of the new system. In parallel to this, as additional funding is allocated, the team plans to move to final design and construction activities, beginning in 2023. > The GBT’s new radar capabilities will introduce a tool that astronomy has not had before, collecting data at higher resolutions and at wavelengths not previously available. NRAO and GBO also are developing advanced data reduction and analysis tools that have not been available before. The flexibility and increased performance of this new system will fill an important need for planetary defense, and also allow astronomers to observe asteroids, comets, planets and moons. The versatility of this system will contribute to many areas of science.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

How much does it cost? I see it was built for $9.3M in 1960. Now they're estimating the cleanup cost alone to be $50M. Inflation adjusted - it should cost ~$95M to re-build. I'm not sure how if you'd need to include the total $50M cleanup on top of that. Either way - if it can be re-built for $95M - that seems like a better deal than spending $50M to clean it up.

jws 4y ago
There are 38,000 1mx2m perforated aluminum panels out there. I would pay a nice premium for them as a wall covering. Maybe not $50m/38000, but a good chunk of that. Having a section of the iconic telescope would be worth it. Now, are there thousands of people like me to make it work at scale?
cma 4y ago
Need to adjust for Puerto Rico's change in something like purchasing power parity since then, not just US inflation, depending on the mix of labor that was involved.
bee_rider 4y ago
It is a big fiddly science instrument that requires constant maintenance, the benefit of cleanup is to get rid of that obligation. If we want to turn it into a museum or something, that might be worth considering. But that will require getting it into a safe state which is presumably lots of the cleanup cost.
echelon 4y ago
$50M is a lot to spend for nothing. Can't the site just be fenced off (assuming it doesn't contaminate groundwater or endanger in-use facilities)? If a private developer wants to take it over and turn it into a tourist destination, let them spend their own money. Throw them some tax incentives, maybe. $95M would be a great deal to new science projects. India put an orbiter around Mars for less. We could start studying a distributed array approach to whatever comes after JWST.
- nullc 4y ago
  The cost of cleanup (which includes restoring the forrest to its natural state) is really what kept it running for a long time-- basically within the budget horizon it was cheaper to keep it running at limp-along levels (which presumably contributed to the failure) than to shut it down. I've long assumed that complete restoration being an assumed mandatory consequence of shutdown was itself a successful gambit from parties that wanted to keep the instrument operational. :)
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Why does it need to be cleaned up? I thought telescope mirrors had to be absurdly pure. It seems like it would make for a super cool museum.
    - nullc 4y ago
      Arecibo was a radio telescope, like a satellite dish. The 'mirror' is a great big metal mesh hemisphere covering 18 acres of land in a mountain valley. It's not an ideal museum location in and of itself because it's almost an hour drive out of the city across some not-sutiable-for-high-traffic mountain roads (see the beginning of the movie Contact for a pretty reasonable view of what the trip out and in is like). Presumably the idea is that if we go around building stuff and just abandoning it we're doing unnecessary harm to nature as well as creating hazardous environments, e.g. when people go in to take the scrap metal and have stuff collapse on them.
    - haneefmubarak 4y ago

shagie 4y ago

The 500m telescope lacks transmitters - this is an important distinction. > Fifth, Arecibo's larger secondary platform also housed several transmitters, making it one of only two instruments in the world capable of radar astronomy. ... The NASA-funded Planetary Radar System allowed Arecibo to study solid objects from Mercury to Saturn, and to perform very accurate orbit determination on near-earth objects, particularly potentially hazardous objects. China's 500m telescope wouldn't be able to capture https://www.planetary.org/space-images/radar-images-of-asteroid https://www.planetary.org/space-images/radar-images-of-aster... because it can't send a pulse. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010DPS....42.1317B/abstract https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010DPS....42.1317B/abstra... > We report Arecibo (2380 MHz, 13 cm) and Goldstone (8560 MHz, 3.5 cm) delay-Doppler radar observations of binary near-Earth asteroid (NEA) 65803 Didymos (1996 GT) obtained on five dates between November 14-26, 2003 during the asteroid's approach within 0.048 AU. You'll note the Goldstone mention there and the "making it one of only two instruments in the world" from the wiki link on the 500 meter article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_astronomy > There is one remaining radar astronomy facility in regular use, the Goldstone Solar System Radar.

snowwrestler 4y ago
Thanks for a substantive and well-sourced comment. There is a comment lower down saying Green Bank might add radar: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33233119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33233119 I’m not in a position to confirm whether that is true though.
- shagie 4y ago
  https://greenbankobservatory.org/future-of-earths-defense-is-ground-based-planetary-radar/ https://greenbankobservatory.org/future-of-earths-defense-is... > The National Science Foundation has awarded funds for the conceptual design of a higher-power radar system on the GBT – one that would be nearly 1,000 times more powerful than the proof of concept. In addition to a more powerful transmitter, NRAO and GBO, working with industry partners, will leverage new, solid-state amplifier and array receiving-system technologies to maximize the effectiveness of the new system. In parallel to this, as additional funding is allocated, the team plans to move to final design and construction activities, beginning in 2023. > The GBT’s new radar capabilities will introduce a tool that astronomy has not had before, collecting data at higher resolutions and at wavelengths not previously available. NRAO and GBO also are developing advanced data reduction and analysis tools that have not been available before. The flexibility and increased performance of this new system will fill an important need for planetary defense, and also allow astronomers to observe asteroids, comets, planets and moons. The versatility of this system will contribute to many areas of science.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]