Arecibo

[Maker]

As in, the massive radio telescope from Goldeneye;

Remember it was in the news in August because a cable snapped and damaged the dish...

Apparently two more cables snapped since then, until the entire instrument platform collapsed yesterday!

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

Oh well.
Scrap value means it may just sit and die slowly.

 

[Greeves246]

Those long pointed fish people will soon clean that site up. Allegedly.

 

[My Old Landy]

Just when the aliens were about to answer the call

 

[Memmeddu]

Rouge Transmission from BATTLEFIELD 4

 

[mike os]

Those long pointed fish people will soon clean that site up. Allegedly.

baracuda?

 

[Brad93]

Looks like it hasn’t had any money spent on it for decades

 

[Nick DV]

As in, the massive radio telescope from Goldeneye;

Shame! Also used in 'Contact' with Jodie Foster.

 

[Will!]

I had a bit of a sad face moment when I read about it this morning.

 

[fizzy]

It's a disgrace they have allowed this to happen. What sort of engineers do they have there these days

 

[Will!]

It's a disgrace they have allowed this to happen. What sort of engineers do they have there these days

"Physicists"

 

[Nick DV]

It's a disgrace they have allowed this to happen. What sort of engineers do they have there these days

Trouble is, too few people believe in little green men .............

 

[Hopefuldave]

That's tragic... When I were a lad, I wanted to be a radio astronomer, would have loved to run that.

Dave H. (the other one)

 

[fizzy]

That's tragic... When I were a lad, I wanted to be a radio astronomer, would have loved to run that.

Dave H. (the other one)

Read up on Dr Taffy Bowen.
He was one of the pioneers of airborne radar and was named as one of the people who helped end the U boat menace.
After the war he was one of the leaders in radio astronomy. He moved to Australia and helped create the Peaks 210ft dish. Also involved in lots of Yank projects.
One of my heros!

 

[Turbo]

I guess there will be a queue of white transit vans & trailers full if p1k3y5 waiting to collect the scrap!

 

[Munkul]

Guessing the sheer scale of the thing meant that original build and maintenance costs had to be scrimped on continuously, otherwise it would quickly have been deemed as too expensive to run.

I still can't understand how they didn't absolutely leap to the challenge of replacing the cables as soon as they snapped...

 

[Nick DV]

I still can't understand how they didn't absolutely leap to the challenge of replacing the cables as soon as they snapped...

Agree with that. Guess it's another sad sign of the times

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

Agree with that. Guess it's another sad sign of the times

Money.
Simply put money.
Ever since The EU built the ELT there was little or no funds to maintain it.
When there was it was spent on the one in Australia.

 

[Munkul]

I mean, we spent 2 million pounds repairing and maintaining our 325ft chimney in our plant over the last 10 years. It's absolutely tiny compared to that thing.

To scale it up to that sort of size and years of neglect, I imagine it would have taken 50 million just for running repairs to the same standard. Never mind the on going maintenance.

 

[Screwdriver]

I seem to recall reading that the cost to repair the original damage would have been prohibitively expensive. Hugely heavy instrument delicately poised over a massive drop in the middle of nowhere. The fact that it has suffered a catastrophic failure before they could even decommission it is testament to the poor condition it must have been in. Probably the right decision but a crying shame all the same.