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Arecibo Observatory dish suffers serious damage (failed suspension cable)
230RN:
.ti teg t'nod llits I
(Backwards text generator for your amusement:
https://www.prepostseo.com/tool/reverse-text-generator
)
Brad Johnson:
Stick a fork in it. NSF announced today that extensive damage and dangers associated with repairs combine to form an insurmountable hurdle. The Arecibo Observatory is to be decommissioned in its entirety.
https://www.space.com/arecibo-observatory-radio-telescope-to-be-destroyed?fbclid=IwAR3_1MWNP9vNIJi-QsD8xBz_zOPrxaAsSsu-KiYDds2mkkwviW9-uhg-1Lc
It's a rather undignified end to a long and lustrous career, but the memories are warm and the contributions many.
Brad
MillCreek:
^^^Is there anything to replace it? The VLA in New Mexico?
lee n. field:
--- Quote from: Fly320s on August 13, 2020, 02:25:31 PM ---I bet it was.... Aliens.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, my thought. Getting ready to sneak in under the radar, so to speak.
--- Quote from: Jim147 on August 13, 2020, 02:42:02 PM ---Best way to prep for invasion.
Who had Alians on their 2020 bingo card?
--- End quote ---
Duh. Ev-ery-body.
Hawkmoon:
--- Quote from: Brad Johnson on November 19, 2020, 03:51:55 PM ---Stick a fork in it. NSF announced today that extensive damage and dangers associated with repairs combine to form an insurmountable hurdle. The Arecibo Observatory is to be decommissioned in its entirety.
https://www.space.com/arecibo-observatory-radio-telescope-to-be-destroyed?fbclid=IwAR3_1MWNP9vNIJi-QsD8xBz_zOPrxaAsSsu-KiYDds2mkkwviW9-uhg-1Lc
It's a rather undignified end to a long and lustrous career, but the memories are warm and the contributions many.
--- End quote ---
Good grief!
--- Quote ---"It is, I think, just truly unfortunate that this main cable failed before we had a chance to get things stabilized," Zauderer said.
--- End quote ---
Obviously, it would have been much better if they had gotten it stabilized, and then the main cable failed. Then they could start all over with trying to re-stablize it.
What's puzzling to me is the statement that they (the engineers hired to study the problem) don't know what the factors of safety are. I'm an architect, not a structural engineer, but structural engineering is part of the education for architects and, in theory, I am legally allowed to practice engineering when it's ancillary to an architectural design I create. Basically, even for structures such as this that don't slot neatly into building codes with their safety factor requirements, It has been my understanding through fifty years of practice that everything a structural engineer does has established factors of safety. What this suggests to me is that some or all of the original design computations must have been lost, discarded, or destroyed, so the teams reviewing the structure now can't reproduce the calculations to decide what's safe and what's not.
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