A tale of two nations: See China blast off from the Moon as drone shows America's Arecibo telescope falling apart Hours after Chinese state media showed the nation's Chang'e-5 probe successfully leaving the Moon, with lunar samples safely tucked away inside, US officials released the first footage of America's Arecibo telescope collapsing. The juxtaposition of the two nations' space science capabilities started at 1510 UTC when Chang'e-5 …
The GoPro was probably setup and just left there. Could have been running for weeks if powered and set to loop record. As for the Drone, it's pretty obvious that it was surveying the cable damage at the moment when it finally gave up. Please don't start any more conspiracy theories. Enough of that mindless drivel around already.
This year's US defence budget was $934billion,
Arecibo's budget for 2019: $3.6million.
For the price of a couple of flying white elephants each year (F35), Arecibo could have been maintained at an adequate level.
But you can't project power with a big telescope as much as you can with a shiny warplane.
This here is the real problem. The absolutely absurd military spending has been going on for so long, it feels strange & uncomfortable for officials to even *think* about suggesting we curb it.
Meanwhile, despite all the great innovations NASA has actually provided for us terrestrial folk, like memory foam and Velcro, you'll still see people regurgitating the same words in protest of it, even on this forum: "Why are we spending so much money on space when there's problems here on Earth? Cut all space funding until land-life is made better!"
And so NASA budgets are always on the chopping block, while the elephant in the room is wearing camouflage.
"The absolutely absurd military spending has been going on for so long, it feels strange & uncomfortable for officials to even *think* about suggesting we curb it."
It's not just that - even just holding it steady would be an achievement.
The US military budget has increased about 40% in the last decade. It's one of the few areas of expenditure the US government opens its pocketbook without question - and that $950 million/year is only the KNOWN spending. Recall this very website once reported on an IT-related accounting fraud in the US army which was 3 times higher than the army's official annual budget
OK, the reality is that a cable snapped in August, and safety investigations showed that it was going to be a real pain to fix safely. Just as they were about to start to begin repairs, another one popped in November, and it was deemed far too dangerous to fix, as people's safety is more important than a telescope near the end of its life anyway.
Fifty-one years ago, America landed two people on the Moon. Today its National Science Foundation is proudly attaching its logo to footage of the collapse of a major piece of scientific infrastructure as a result of decades of underinvestment, while China is sending back images taken from the surface of the Moon. An instrument for which there is no replacement, anywhere in the world. If an instrument is eventually constructed which can do the work which can now not be done, it will be constructed in China.
But no-one will care, because Americans – like all of us – are sitting staring at their phones, living in a dream world where they can pretend that the real world which is falling apart around them does not matter.
To state the obvious here, its not just the telescope that wasn't maintained, its a symptom of a much wider problem.
You see the Barrett supreme court ruling? Religion overrules pandemic disease control? You cannot limit the numbers who go to church to stop spreading a deadly disease. It's not really a religious ruling, its a political partisan one. If Trump had tackled the virus, then the Republican supreme court would not be undermining disease control right now to fit in with Trump's inaction, they'd be saying "Jesus doesn't want you to kill your fellow man by spreading a deadly disease".
Republicans kill people with a deadly disease in the name of Jesus, because Trump didn't tackle Coronavirus.
And along comes President Biden with his competent government, and Barret and the Supremes will undermine competent government for partisan aims all the way along.
So now see next year, businesses bar people from joining a gym or similar mass-meeting venue, if they are not vaccinated. The Republican televangelists scream "Jesus demands you don't get vaccinated". Amy Cohen Barrett will rule that religious freedom overrules disease control and thus you cannot stop businesses from requiring vaccination. She'll intentionally spread a deadly disease with that ruling too. More killing in the name of Jesus.
Do that enough and she'll spread Covid so widely, it will mutate and you'll never get it under control. Like the Flu new strains each year, new death toll. Year in year out, you'll need to wait another year for the next vaccine.
All because Republicans and their partisan politics are more important than law or country or life or basic legal judicial competence.
The decline of the USA in a nutshell.
"The decline of the USA in a nutshell."
To me your whole post of semi-coherent irrelevant rubbish is symptomatic of a mental illness at best. Shouldn't you be happily looking forward to the great new future shortly to be ushered in by your favoured political saviour? Oh no... Trump is already getting the blame for Biden's screwups pre-emptively!
(For the record I am neither American nor do I have any particular attachment to any political party anywhere.)
Will Barret do that? Yes. Did Trump appoint her? Yes. Is killing people by intentionally spreading a deadly disease in the name of Jesus blasphemy? Yes. So would Trump be to blame? Yes.
You don't like me saying it, but when Barret does that, don't pretend Trump isn't to blame for her being there, or that it wasn't predictable or that it doesn't form the pattern of decline in the USA.
Send Barret a photo and little bio of the people she's killed. She obviously lives in the little Faux News bubble, where the dead are all 'crisis actors', so it would be nice for her to actually understand who she kills by her choices. Put faces on the dead she causes.
Am I supposed to blame Biden for appointing Barret? A judge of barely two years experience??
Have you heard of Scott O Grady? A trumpette Q Anon conspiracy nutjob Trump is trying to put in the Pentagon in charge of troops? His primary qualification for the job is he demanded Trump call martial law if he lost the election, shoot his opponents for treason for daring a coup election against Trump.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/trump-nominee-pentagon-martial-law/index.html
Will Trump be responsible if Scott goes on a killing spree? Of course. He's a nutjob, pumped up on Trump lies, and clearly shouldn't be put in charge of armed troops. Trump chose him exactly because of that.
Trump knows he lost the election, all of his attacks on America have "to by January" time limit on them. But his nutjobs really buy into the lies.
As Trump leaves power, he's getting so damn desperate. It's kinda sad. A bit pathetic. How much damage can he do? Can he undermine the military? Definitely for Afghanistan. Can he have a few thousand troops killed? Yep, he'll hand them on a plate to the Taliban. Can he hand all the US secrets over to Putin? Probably already has. Can he have a coup attempt led by a Q Anon nutjob? Unlikely, chain of command prevents coups. Can he crash the economy? Easily. Can he remove 20% of voters from the census by pretending renters are not Americans? Probably not, too many court battles to fight. But he'll try and Republicans will cower in the corner all pathetic, wishing he'd just go away and making excuses.
The decline of the USA in a nutjobshell.
No, a Republican religious nutjob name Amy Cohen Barret, blocked basic infectious disease control in the name of 'religious freedom'.
Science says, "limit numbers", Republican nutjob says "but religious freedom trumps science".
The things falling over in this case are people, and yes Republicans are responsible for their deaths.
Actually, science says that most people (those who are not elderly or chronically infirm) should live their lives normally and should be encouraged to do so as a matter of policy. Go read the Great Barrington Declaration, written by three medical researchers (that's a kind of scientist) who are faculty members at well-known tier-1 institutions of higher learning. Over 50,000 other scientists and clinicians worldwide have also signed.
But then, why let science get in the way of your political ideology? El Reg encouraged you by suggesting that America's had a bad four years in space exploration, as if that's mostly or exclusively Mr. Trump's fault. Total nonsense. The Americans have been floundering for decades regardless of politics. Back on topic, then...
The decline of the United States in space exploration begin in the 1970s, long before anyone had heard of Justice Barrett, COVID, or The Register. That decline might be laid at the feet of the Johnson administration (a leftist, by the way), or the Nixon administration (a rightist, by the way), the Vietnam war (started during the Kennedy administration, a famous supporter of space exploration, and continued by leftists and rightists alike for over a decade), or whatever other sources to which one might attribute the general malaise of the 1970s. And there were many. If you want a technical, on-point discussion of this, I suggest reading Aldrin. He is quite accessible, apolitical, and has made concrete suggestions for what the Americans (or anyone, for that matter) might do instead of their timid LEO-focused programme. And no, China's not doing any of it either. They appear to be on track to replay the US history in space, right down to the Americans' eventual ill-fated obsession with orbital weapons systems. We should all hope they do no better, because if the Chinese are successful in space that is where they will focus their attention.
The 'Great' Barrington Declaration essentially says:
1) Anyone at risk of Covid (old, disabled, etc.) lock your doors and do not come out again, ever.
2) Everyone else carry on, and you probably won't die. A lot of you will become quite ill, but oh well.
The nonsense piece of paper thinks that Covid will die out when herd immunity sets in, but that will take a long time without a vaccine, years, and so essentially the idea is everyone over 60 or so should be locked in their house for a couple of years at least.
The "let's all get infected because herd immunity yay!" scenario has been conclusively proven as bullshit. Even Sweden is retreating from it now. US hospitals all over the country are at capacity and things are going to get worse with Thanksgiving travel infections hitting the hospitals soon, followed by Christmas/New Year's travel infections.
I hope the vaccine isn't quite enough for herd immunity, so the deniers and antivaxers are forced to live (and die) with the consequences of their stupidity. Fortunately in this case kids almost never from covid so parents being antivax nutjobs won't harm their kids (other than I suppose the chance of some becoming an orphan, but perhaps not being raised by stupid parents will help them in the long run)
Moderna reports their vaccine is 100% effective against "severe covid" so even the small percentage of vaccinated people who catch covid won't die from it. All the death will fall upon those who choose not to get the vaccine, and deservedly so.
"To state the obvious here, its not just the telescope that wasn't maintained, its a symptom of a much wider problem."
Ignoring the rest of the rant, the USA has _major_ infrastructure woes. The Interstate highway system deferred maintenance budget is now in excess of $4.5 TRILLION - that's why we occasionally see major bridges falling down
The recent harvest of idiots at 1600 Pennsylvania are a SYMPTOM of the problem, not the cause - the people behind the cause have had the upper hand since 5 March 1980 (That's when Reagan broke the Air Traffic Contoller strike and declared their union illegal), after campaigning hard since the 1940s to breack the New Deal (recruiting evangelical america for the ride)
Firstly, if the pandemic started in China, that does not mean that the country is in any way to blame, any more than Iceland is to blame for the pollution caused by a volcanic eruption in that country. Secondly, there is considerable doubt as to whether it actually did originate in China, seeing that it has been discovered that there were people in other countries who contracted the disease prior to the Chinese outbreak.
"that does not mean that the country is in any way to blame"
I see you didn't get the memo: China is the new Bad Guy, so they are to blame for absolutely everything.
Now there aren't any credible communists left to scare people with, the Yellow Peril will have to step in. (And no, China isn't communist, it's actually more capitalist then the USA.)
China isn't communist, it's an autocratic dictatorship.
There is a middle ground somewhere between saying that the virus was developed on purpose in a Chinese bio weapon lab and China is completely faultless in their handling of the situation.
There is a small mountain of evidence showing China pressuring the WHO not to recommend travel restrictions and for at least a few months there was strong suppression of warnings and news by provincial level government in Hubei.
"Communism with Chinese characteristics" is partly to blame for the initial spread due to systemic fear of speaking out or making tough decisions in the PRC political hierarchy. Supporters of democracy need to call this out instead of coddling dictators.
There is no credible evidence that initial human to human contact originated anywhere but Hubei province (and no, a Global Times article is not credible evidence). Please do your homework and don't just spread CCP led conspiracy theories.
I don't blame China for the virus existing but I do blame China and the WHO for playing down the situation because the CCP didn't want China to be affected economically.
As of mid January the WHO - under immense pressure from top levels of Chinese government - was still advocating no restrictions to worldwide travel, anyone who suggested temporarily suspending travel from China was labeled a racist and any chance to control and isolate the virus was lost.
Taiwan has experienced China's "nothing to worry about" line before with SARS, so travel was locked down immediately contrary to WHO guidelines and that seems to be a big part of what has kept us safe.
Saying that the virus may well have originated outside China is hardly a conspiricy theory. Unless of course you subscribe to the notion that any view other than your own is part of a conspiricy.
ISTR that many countries downplayed the threat, including UK and USA and were very late in imposing lockdown or travel restrictions.
A distinction to make here - Arecibo was a radar telescope, that is is could send out a pulse of radio waves and then listen for the reflection. That's how it mapped asteroids and comets, which don't really emit a lot at those freqencies, and helped locate SOHO when that went AWOL.
FAST, while it is a very capable (and yes, very big) instrument, is a radio telescope and so can only do the passive, listening, bit.
There's a massive case for rebuilding an even better than before version of Arecibo, let's hope administrators and politicos can make it happen.
But I'm not sure Puerto Rico is the best place for it. Probably better to put it somewhere where hurricanes don't occur and the air is dryer so the cables won't rot away when maintenance is inevitably skipped. I think the desert southwest would be ideal, and there is tons of federal land out there that's pretty much worthless.
There's Meteor Crater, which is already in a nice dish shape.
However it is only about 30 miles away from Flagstaff, AZ, which is a fairly large town with its own FM & AM radio stations. I'm guessing with Arecibo being a radio telescope, part of choosing its location has to do with minimizing local interference.
Meteor crater is a tourist attraction, and way too large for this. There are plenty of places in Arizona, Nevada and Utah that aren't near big cities/transmitters (or the transmitters are blocked by mountains) and aren't in a particularly scenic area that would be diminished by a big metal dish.
I don't know... buildings seem to be engineered to withstand those conditions in thriving countries like Singapore and other tropical, hurricane/cyclone/typhoon/earthquake vulnerable areas next to the ocean.
The problem isn't the location, it was maintenance. Given that it survived 50+ years in that environment, I think they originally solved that engineering problem.
There is the whole matter of suspending a 900 ton deck above a dish without an apparent thought of "how do we bring this down for x"? In a replacement, I would hope that issue would be addressed.
Is it clear you ever have to lower it? If the problem is replacing cables and if there is enough margin in the design that you can remove a cable without getting it close to failure, then you can replace cables with it up there. My guess is there was enough margin since cables did break and it did not immediately collapse, it's just that the process of replacing them incrementally had not happened, perhaps ever.
But I'm not an engineer: there may be things which really would require it to be lowered.
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