On 10 August one of the cables holding up the 950 ton suspended instrument platform broke. They spent the next three months doing paperwork (a plan for temporary repairs). On 6 November a second support cable failed. More paperwork was accomplished. Then finally on 1 December the last cable failed and the 950 ton suspended instrument platform fell, busting a huge hole in the parabolic reflector and destroying all the instruments in the platform.
What they should have done, back in August when the first cable failed, is simple. Get about six big rolls of good stout steel cable. Run six cables out to the suspended instrument platform to hold it up even if all the original cables broke. The should have been able to get that done in less than three months, even out in Puerto Rico, where everything has to be shipped out from the mainland. Instead they accomplished paperwork while the Arecibo radio telescope fell into ruin. They are going to abandon it now.
2 comments:
Seems to me that Arecibo is a killed telescope that $300,000,000 could be used from the education fund of $3,000,000,000 can easily be swung.
I am not too sure just what New Tricks is trying to say here. Arecibo was the biggest radio telescope in the world until just very recently when the Chinese built one somewhat bigger. Arecibo has made a lot of discoveries over the years and surely would continue making them if we had not let it fall into ruin while doing endless paperwork instead of fixing it.
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