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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 $50M. Inflation adjusted - it should cost ~$

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
      > I thought telescope mirrors had to be absurdly pure. It's a radio telescope, so think more along the lines of like a giant satellite dish. At the wavelength of the radio frequency signals, the tiny dust etc don't matter until they start to build up. > Why does it need to be cleaned up? The recent natural disaster(s?) in Puerto Rico damaged it massively, which given its sophistication and size likely means there's stuff strewn everywhere and facility damage. You don't generally want to leave government facilities to degrade to the extreme in disuse, so you still want to stabilize things to make it safe to traverse the area and be able to safely achieve the next goal of the facility and surrounding area.

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
    > I thought telescope mirrors had to be absurdly pure. It's a radio telescope, so think more along the lines of like a giant satellite dish. At the wavelength of the radio frequency signals, the tiny dust etc don't matter until they start to build up. > Why does it need to be cleaned up? The recent natural disaster(s?) in Puerto Rico damaged it massively, which given its sophistication and size likely means there's stuff strewn everywhere and facility damage. You don't generally want to leave government facilities to degrade to the extreme in disuse, so you still want to stabilize things to make it safe to traverse the area and be able to safely achieve the next goal of the facility and surrounding area.