Re: 60 years old? -- Time to build a new one
How about a "World Beating" British Radio Telescope. A Square (Imperial) Mile affair - none of this Metric or American nonsense.
The main telescope at Jodrell Bank is still the third largest steerable radio telescope in the world, and five years older than the Arecibo telescope.
It was a much different Britain in 1957 when it started operation, of course. That year the Calder Hall commercial nuclear power plant was completed and the Avro Vulcan bomber entered service.
However, since the 1980s, successive governments have promoted financial services etc at the expense of manufacturing and technology. So, as with nuclear power and military aircraft, I very much doubt that the country now has the domestic capability to produce a comparable instrument.
Any "World Beating" British Radio Telescope would have to be designed in China and the parts manufactured in Germany and the United States.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
