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The end of the line for the Arecibo radio telescope

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coppercone2:
I have a feeling that a giant mylar balloon will be less reliable then this telescope for some reason

filled with h2 for budgetary reasons?  :clap:

That is going to end up looking like that scene from the movie 'red planet' where the fungus catches on fire

What I think now is that you can get some high quality roofing out of all those panels. If you make jigs and stuff you can probobly remake like 1/2 of the bottom structure with panel beating, sanding and welding using medium low skill labor. Worlds largest body shop effort. Where are the Eastwood automotive and Miller metal working company sponsorships? Maybe they can put a lincoln electric logo on it like a race car if they supply some tools and materials. Seen from orbital telescopes and planes

CatalinaWOW:

--- Quote from: coppercone2 on December 05, 2020, 11:15:28 pm ---I have a feeling that a giant mylar balloon will be less reliable then this telescope for some reason

filled with h2 for budgetary reasons?  :clap:


--- End quote ---

Fill it with H2.  H2 + vacuum => bad vacuum but no combustion.

You would use the Starship to launch your balloon into a beyond synchronous orbit for several reasons.  Avoid occluding communications satellites in synchronous orbit.  Avoid atmospheric drag and debris problems in lower orbits.  And by keeping the subtense low you minimize impact on earthbound observations. 

Small thrusters, or possibly large gyros rotate the thing around so it can point anywhere, something Arecibo couldn't do and the Chinese one can't either.  You could use perhaps 2/3 of the aperture without too much spherical aberration.

But on your point an army of metal beaters can build ground based alumimum mirrors for RF.  Even higher frequency stuff if you give them the time and tools to do the job.  But even third world wages add up.  And the logistics of allocating panel shapes and interfaces to thousands of small shops would be an interesting problem.  But the idea has merit because it is a hook to get funding from large NGO aide organizations.  Wages, plus skills development, plus infrastructure development are all good carrots.

There are very few ideas crazy enough to throw out.  The only question is which ones will develop the army to implement.   Look back at cell phones.  Think about the initial pitch.  "We want to make a radio network that requires transmitters and receivers with 12 km spacing over the entire inhabited world.  And build millions of the most complex radios that anyone can imagine.  Why?  So teenage girls can gab with their friends endlessly and lonely people can post pictures of cats."  Sounds pretty crazy doesn't it.

coppercone2:
they almost destroyed space though with things like project west ford

i mean they can literary destroy space. Someone thought that all the people talking makes propaganda and demonizing harder so they are less likely to eradicate a country because of some memos.

PR could develop the 'iron triangle' for weird manually made reflectors and such, they have good access to water for shipping too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willets_Point,_Queens

They used to do it for 1/15th the money insurance gave you to do a simple job. Maybe it would work because those RF projects are all heavily bureaucratized so they can deal with a massive delay. Takes about a week for someone to scratch their ass.

Probably better for them to develop trade skills and work for goverment money then to have that aluminum come back to haunt us in fake car hoods. mm 10$ car hood made with NASA parts and alumiweld rods. Given what I see going on with car tire markets (i.e. phillipines) its probobly gonna be turned into car parts.

BravoV:

--- Quote from: CJay on December 05, 2020, 05:04:40 pm ---
--- Quote from: RoGeorge on December 05, 2020, 09:36:56 am ---I think a rebuild is out of the question.

If there wasn't enough interest (or enough money) to maintain the former telescope, why (or how to) build a new one?

--- End quote ---

I think that's about the reality of it, if there wasn't money to maintain it then there won't be any money for a rebuild unless it proves to be of military significance.

--- End quote ---

Even there is a money and interest, whats the point ? The whole Puerto Rico island was destroyed by hurricane Maria 3 years ago is still abandoned by mainland federal government with no help what so ever, the basic and major infrastructure still heavily damaged, the money better use to help these poor people 1st, and a telescope has much lower priority.

Unless those Puerto Ricans are 2nd grade US citizen. Just read this carefully -> Reference

Its like watching a poor African countries that is still struggling on basic need, but want to build rocket to send their astronaut to the moon.  :-DD

Kleinstein:
The arecibo installation was more than just a big dish an receiver. The special feature was the ability also to actively send.  A large dish in space may be possible, but transmission in the MW power range would be hard from space.
The radar capability is, what is needed to get accurate orbital data for asteroids. Not sure how good one could add a powerful send part to existing radio telescopes.

There may have been some military (space flight related)  use in the initial phase, for upper atmospheric studies, but this should by now be mainly finished and common knowledge. The atmospheric studies are more like helping understand climate change and effects of pollution.
The military does not need such a dish any more.

Compared to space missions rebuilding the dish would be relatively cheap. The tricky part could be more  like getting the funding for the ongoing costs, so we don't get the next collapse by 2050. A chance would be if NASA decides to forgets about maned space missions - lots of money to set free.

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