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The instrument platform at Arecibo has collapsed - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55147973 some of the support cables had snapped in recent months and officials thought that this was a likely outcome.
Darn. Visited it once, pretty massive.
Certainly warmer than the day I went to Jodrell ank.
I saw the original damage photos a few weeks ago and seemed rather sad they were going to scrap it rather than repair. This more major collapse now makes you understand that initial decision and just how bad the condition must have been.
It does somewhat surprise me that there isn't some redundancy built into things like this. Sort of: we know we need four cables from each tower so we'll design it for six and only fit four then we can add an extra cable before retiring one of the old ones. Cost comes into it I suppose.
When I first saw the hole in the dish it made me realise that most of what I know about the structure of the telescope itself came from the Bond film. I didn't realise the dish was suspended above the ground; I thought it was a giant concrete bowl.
This is like when we visited Alcatraz on honeymoon to find there is no Lower Lighthouse, they made it up in The Rock. I was so disappointed. Bastards.
Sounds like they added a lot of weight / instruments over it's lifetime. Cables were over 8cm diameter so adding a few more would be even more mass and load on the towers so just compounding problems. I guess maybe a fairly hostile / humid environment and also designed in the days of hand calcs not fea.
Scott Manley over on youtube has done a short video about this with the limited information available.
It's very sad but at the same time, when it was built it wasn't expected to be still operating in 2020, and it was already being spun down well before the collapses. Not so much end-of-life but certainly minimal investment- it just was past the point where it was a smart use of resources.
I'd have liked to have seen it preserved just as an awesome thing but keeping it operating wasn't going to happen I don't think.
whitestone
Free MemberIt does somewhat surprise me that there isn’t some redundancy built into things like this. Sort of: we know we need four cables from each tower so we’ll design it for six and only fit four then we can add an extra cable before retiring one of the old ones.
I expect there was a LOT of redundancy built into it. Lots of which has been used to add extra hardware ie weight but mostly, it's just allowed it to serve for almost 6 decades which it wasn't designed to do (I can't find any indication of its planned lifespan but much of what it's achieved was in addition to its original mission).
Shame, I visited when I was a kid, very impressive structure/facility!
The central sensor platform weighs 90 tons!
Incredible video footage of the moment the cables let go, including from a drone right next to one of the towers:
https://gizmodo.com/drone-video-shows-dramatic-moment-of-arecibo-collapse-1845799543
I'm sort of perversely glad the moment was captured tbh
An icon of my childhood. Radio telescopes moved on to interferometry years ago. Sad.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer
Collection of footage from various angles here. I saw the drone footage on Twitter earlier.
The central sensor platform weighs 90 tons!
The BBC article says 900.
According to the NSF site https://www.naic.edu/ao/telescope-description it was 900 tons.
Scott Manley over on youtube
This guy is ace. Real boy in a grown ups body when it comes to Space 👍
Scott Manley has just done a video analysis of the fall.