I’ve known about it since about 1972, when I was 12. When they “destroyed” it in Goldeneye, that was pretty bad. I saw it on a free pass, so it woukd have been early. I knew it was Arecibo, I guess for most people it was just special effects.
We were prepared for this destruction, though I really thought it would hang on till deliberate demolition.
Video credits:
Pretty sure it could have been useful for 57 more. Sad it’s gone. I don’t think people picked up on my irony in the original comment. Hardly think I need to put /s on everything.
So if no drone was observing, the telescope would still be both in one piece and destroyed?
Maybe Elon Musk can build a private radio telescope that’s just for rich people
Remind me this dramatic video.
warning. The worker with the cutting torch dies in that video on camera
Needs a warning. The worker with the cutting torch dies in that video on camera.
Ya gotta wall dincha?
The drone pilot was probably pretty close, and was probably a bit distracted by hearing a huge radio telescope collapse. It must have been pretty terrifying to be anywhere nearby.
Really we should congratulate them for continuing to film, and not just throwing the controls to the ground and running away.
That’s a nice thought, but big telescopes are not known for being designed to last that long (other than the 200 inch on Palomar).
The cables suspending the flying structure at Arecibo were failing, and the engineers responsible for the maintenance of the telescope were surprised by this fact. They had no plans in place to replace the cables periodically. This implies that the telescope lived as long as the designers could have hoped for, given their inability to precisely calculate the fatigue life of the structure in its operating conditions and maintenance regimen. (I’m not saying they were incompetent, I’m just saying that it’s very difficult to predict structural lifetimes.)
Big telescopes often have structural problems; they’re just not made known to the world. both of the big, rotating, cubical telescope enclosures on Mt. Graham in Arizona had to have their wheel bearings upgraded after a few years, as the original weight specifications given to the wheel designers didn’t get revised after the enclosure designs were completed (with extra weight added during the design process). This is the sort of mistake that is endemic to the world of things designed for scientists.
In short, this telescope design did pretty darn well.
Hackaday is making a lot about some ARPA funding in the early days, something I’d never heard of. wikipedia mentions it, but my interpretation is that ARPA wanted some tests done about the ionosphere, so the money was there. Not some cold war defense plan that Hackaday is reading into it.
But it might mean the money came from the defense budget, and what remained was something useful for radio and radar astronomy. If you skew it that way, it never had to have a long life, so what we got was gravy.
But I don’t know how march of tye initial cost ARPA paid. In almost fifty years of knowing about Arecibo, I’d never heard of it as anything but a radio telescope.
That design could in all likelihood have gone through some upgrades and didn’t necessarily have to remain fixed. The receiver platform could have been made much lighter, perhaps separating the telescope from the radar transmitters and relieve some of the stress on the cables and towers, even allowing the cables to be replaced on a maintenance cycle. Many things could have been done that weren’t. Still could. It might feel like a total loss, but that location and much of the dish structure, reflective panels and electronics/cable channeling could be reused for Arecibo II.
Here is a video of the construction of what was then the world’s biggest radio telescope: EDIT nix that video thanks @nixiebunny . Ulp…I googled “Aricebo construction” and up came China’s radio telescope - which to my untrained eye looked similar. I wasn’t perturbed by the Chinese text but had thought the site access was a bit tidier than I’d expected. This vid is also interesting:
That’s a video of the construction of FAST, the 500m radio telescope in China. You may have noticed all the Chinese captions. Also, it has twice as many support towers.
I’ve been a transport policy wonk and in government comms for decades and I still haven’t come up with a way of getting a ribbon on critical maintenance for Ministers to cut. “I hereby declare this pot hole filled/bearings greased/bridge strengthened” doesn’t quite cut it.
For every new bit of kit though there’s a media release for the planning; one for the sod-turning; one for every construction milestone; one that it’s about to be opened; one for opening; and one for a few weeks later when it’s in use.
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