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The end of the line for the Arecibo radio telescope
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magic:

--- Quote from: james_s on November 28, 2020, 02:28:49 am ---I don't understand how it got THAT bad without anyone noticing that failure was imminent. Rust of cables like that doesn't happen overnight. At least it isn't just in my country that so many people defer maintenance until it becomes a huge expensive problem. I know multiple people who kept putting off having the timing belt on their car engine changed until it snapped and destroyed the engine. People do the same thing with oil changes.

--- End quote ---
It's called fall of civilization and poverty.

But when I say it they don't listen because they have the latest generation iShiny to distract themselves with :horse:
Oh, and big dreams. Never forget big dreams ::)
CJay:

--- Quote from: TerraHertz on November 27, 2020, 11:50:02 pm ---
--- Quote from: David Hess on November 27, 2020, 09:43:20 pm ---The strands were broken from the two recent overload events.

--- End quote ---

Sorry for lack of a link, but somewhere in the various videos I've watched about this recently there was a short sequence of pictures of the cables, taken by drones.

I'd think even controlled demolition by placing cutting charges on all the cables so they can be dropped in one go, would be an extremely dangerous job.

--- End quote ---

I think maybe you've answered the question of how to place demolition charges, I wonder if it would be possible to have drones place shaped charges, one packaged so it 'falls' into correct alignment to cut the cable...
CatalinaWOW:

--- Quote from: james_s on November 28, 2020, 02:28:49 am ---I don't understand how it got THAT bad without anyone noticing that failure was imminent. Rust of cables like that doesn't happen overnight. At least it isn't just in my country that so many people defer maintenance until it becomes a huge expensive problem. I know multiple people who kept putting off having the timing belt on their car engine changed until it snapped and destroyed the engine. People do the same thing with oil changes.

--- End quote ---

Yeah, but this was our country.  Puerto Rico isn't a state, but for all practical purposes it is part of the US.  And the folk who provide funding and deferred maintenance were virtually all in the mainland. 

This died because it was less important to us than the military, the ISS, school lunches student loans and a myriad of other things, many of which no one really cares about.
james_s:
Oh I missed that it's Puerto Rico, for some reason I was thinking it was somewhere in South America. Figures. So typically American to neglect modest repairs until it turns into a huge expensive writeoff.
David Hess:

--- Quote from: james_s on November 28, 2020, 02:28:49 am ---I don't understand how it got THAT bad without anyone noticing that failure was imminent. Rust of cables like that doesn't happen overnight. At least it isn't just in my country that so many people defer maintenance until it becomes a huge expensive problem. I know multiple people who kept putting off having the timing belt on their car engine changed until it snapped and destroyed the engine. People do the same thing with oil changes.
--- End quote ---

Maintenance was limited (halted?) by budget reductions after 2007 if not sooner.
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