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This is horrible. Arecibo is still crucial in radio astronomy experiments ongoing as of 2019. It should be repaired, until a replacement is built.

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As the article explains, it has been deemed to be unsafe to repair. What's probably missing in that sentence is "...within an acceptable budget."

Not sure... even with an infinite budget, you need time to build your repair solutions. It's possible that for no amount of money can you repair it before it suffers complete collapse without doing risky things that may cause loss of life.

Yup, as the classic saying goes "nine women can't make a baby in one month". There's a minimum time for things even without budget constraints.

Speaking with absolutely no expertise in the matter, I would guess it’s on the verge of collapse due to lack of maintenance or fatal design flaw. It’s probably no longer a matter of fixing more like a total rebuild would be required?

The article also says the NSF has been looking to divest since 2006 in favor of other projects and had a signed agreement to transfer operations to UCF. It's not simply a matter of whether or not it's still useful, but whether it's worth the cost relative to other facilities.

Yeah, in the previous story I mentioned[1] NANOGrav, which is on the brink of some really interesting science but relies heavily on Arecibo for their dataset.

They mention a delay of more than a few months of data from Arecibo would have very negative consequences, so an outright loss must be a very, very significant blow for them.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25046378

I loved seeing Arecibo when I last visited PR. It is sad to see it dismantled -- I wonder what plans, if any, there are to replace its capabilities.

FAST is now online, newer and larger.

It seems FAST isn't a complete substitute for Arecibo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Sp...

Whose money are you volunteering to be spent on that?

I'm sure you could trade a handful of Patriot missiles and one or two F-35's to fund it several times over.

Quick and probably very inaccurate calculation

Arecibo cost $9.3 million in 1963. This is equal to $79,000,000 now (https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1963?amount=93000...).

An F-35 costs about $100 million.

Based on that, I'd be happy to give up a single F-35 to rebuild Arecibo.

And the US is planning to purchase 2500 of those. Because 2400 are clearly not enough.

The defense budget is tiny compared to the US's welfare state programs.

It also affords the US a position as the world’s reserve currency which itself is worth trillions of dollars.

I’m not sure the ROI analysis is particularly straightforward, all things considered.

You think that removing 2 F-35s from the budget will significantly alter that calculus?

To be clear. The US' >5000 Nuclear warheads is more than enough to cement its place as the most important military power in the world.

> You think that removing 2 F-35s from the budget will significantly alter that calculus?

you think that the "don't buy 2 F-35s and fix arecibo" train of thought ends at fixing arecibo? like, if the military hawks would just give up enough budget to fix it, all the other cries to reduce their budget would cease?

come on.

I don't know if tiny is the word I'd use. ~3% is smaller than ~5%, yes, but still an absurd amount of money.

The defense budget IS a welfare program.

Corporate welfare. But as Romney says, "corporations are people, my friend".

A couple of SSBNs are all we need to assure national defense. The rest is one big jobs program.

Welfare programs promote the welfare of USA residents, which is a valid use of public funds. The defense budget is almost entirely wasted. We haven't won a war in 75 years. Our various bumbling military misadventures have killed thousands of Americans and millions of other humans. If we spent a tenth of what we spend, both we and humanity in general would be safer, happier, and more prosperous. The Pentagon is never held to account for its myriad failures, so over time it has evolved to do only one thing well: consume vast resources.

Rule of law means we must check the US Constitution for what is "a valid use of public funds". OK...

Well, it looks like war gets the public funds.

The scale of how much money the USA spends pointlessly on weapons is almost as mind boggling to comprehend as the size of the galaxy. It's depressing to imagine what we could do otherwise if all this money wasn't wasted, or if it was simply returned to taxpayers.

Probably cut 10 F35s and build a new one. Of course current politicians won't do anything that is bipartisan and generally forward thinking. Dems only want to spend money on social programs and Republicans only want to spend it on blowing brown people up. It's a sad state.

I don’t get the flagging, it’s a very valid question.

I’m sure the people at PR would rather see the money invested on infrastructure with higher impact on their citizens life.

Being from PR I have a lot of friends and follow a big community online.

In the past hour I've only been seeing people from the island lament this. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit.

I think a lot of people understand that not spending the money on this doesn't mean that that money will appear somewhere else.

The rest, I'm pretty sure that if you tell them that there's different buckets where money comes from and that money simply won't shift into others, would quickly say repair/rebuild it.

There's a sense of pride with the radio telescope. I can only speak for what I've seen, but a lot of people visit on school field trips. We all know it.

This sucks.

If $100M was invested in building a new one, much of that money would stay in the PR economy in hiring local labor.So it's not a win-lose scenario -- winning more funding could be a net win for the locals too.

Never said it had 0 impact, just that there’s likely infrastructure with higher impact

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