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Comment by jnsaff2 | Hacker News Reader

If they can't find $8M to extend this ones life for 10 years then I highly doubt they are going to get a new one. Unfortunately.

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I suspect there is very little justification for a manned platform anymore.

It requires are crew of five (not including the up-to 11 scientists). Much of the science would probably be better off without noise introduced by crew and the generators.

Scientists might be better off with an unmanned battery powered platform. Or unmanned ROVs.

And if you do need a manned platform, the deep sea oil industry now operates hundreds of them. It might be cheaper for scientists to simply piggy-back on those.

>And if you do need a manned platform, the deep sea oil industry now operates hundreds of them. It might be cheaper for scientists to simply piggy-back on those.

Not that much cheaper. At least in the US based oil companies I have worked with, the cost of sending even one person to an offshore platform can easily exceed 20k USD. Everyone on the platform has to have extensive safety training. Only a few training facilities are setup to do things like Helicopter Underwater Escape Training [1] so the cost is pretty high.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHTk3JNtMlw

20k sounds like peanuts compared to the cost of maintaining their own platform.

It apparently cost 600k to build[0] (6M in 2023 USD), much less than I would expect.

[0] https://scripps.ucsd.edu/ships/flip/history

It would cost $600m minimum today

Given how much money is thrown around by rich people, I find it so hard to believe that $8M for something like this is nowhere to be found.

The free market in action! As everyone knows, if nobody is willing to pay, then nobody values it.

More like the free market inaction.

I think there are probably dozens of things like this(not exactly but random things) that could use also millions. Like that observatory. And there is only so much willingness to spend money.

or maybe California or the federal government's budget?

Doesn't generate enough clicks.

A sad commentary no doubt. But, it is always tough to get donors to cough up sustainment funds. The glamor is in the new. Might be easier to get more if the naming rights are offered up. Newer isn't always better but one can hope the same foresight and build quality can be brought to a future design.

Is it only about money or could it also be about its usefulness? I have no information on this, but like when Arecibo collapsed, there were discussions about how much it would cost to fix it and how useful it could be. Maybe it has made a lot of research, and some new research directions would better make use of another kind of tool?

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