Astronomers downsize their proposal for rebuilding Arecibo
Faced with little interest from the National Science Foundation to spend the half a billion dollars required for their initial proposal to rebuild the Arecibo radio telescope, astronomers have now downsized their proposal significantly.
[I]n 2021 Anish Roshi, the observatory’s head of radio astronomy, unveiled a proposal to replace the telescope with a phased array of 1112 parabolic dishes each 9 m in diameter, placed on a tiltable, plate-like structure. This new facility, with an estimated cost of $454m, would provide the same a collecting area as a 300 m parabolic dish. “It would have a much wider sky coverage and would offer capabilities for radio astronomy, planetary, and space and atmospheric sciences,” Roshi says. “It would be a unique instrument for doing science that competitive projects couldn’t do.”
A lack of support from the NSF, however, has forced researchers to go back to the drawing board to make the array “more cost-effective both for construction and operation” as Roshi puts it. In the revised proposal, submitted to arXiv late last month, his team now envisions a downsized version of the original concept. Dubbed NGAT-130, it would consist of 102 dishes each 13 m in diameter that would in combination have a collecting area equivalent to a single 130 m dish.
No cost estimates are as yet available for this new proposal. Nor has the NSF expressed any opinion on whether it is even interested. At the moment its only action at Arecibo has been to propose converting the observatory into an education center, one that is located far from anything, is hard to reach, and will likely see few students or visitors.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Faced with little interest from the National Science Foundation to spend the half a billion dollars required for their initial proposal to rebuild the Arecibo radio telescope, astronomers have now downsized their proposal significantly.
[I]n 2021 Anish Roshi, the observatory’s head of radio astronomy, unveiled a proposal to replace the telescope with a phased array of 1112 parabolic dishes each 9 m in diameter, placed on a tiltable, plate-like structure. This new facility, with an estimated cost of $454m, would provide the same a collecting area as a 300 m parabolic dish. “It would have a much wider sky coverage and would offer capabilities for radio astronomy, planetary, and space and atmospheric sciences,” Roshi says. “It would be a unique instrument for doing science that competitive projects couldn’t do.”
A lack of support from the NSF, however, has forced researchers to go back to the drawing board to make the array “more cost-effective both for construction and operation” as Roshi puts it. In the revised proposal, submitted to arXiv late last month, his team now envisions a downsized version of the original concept. Dubbed NGAT-130, it would consist of 102 dishes each 13 m in diameter that would in combination have a collecting area equivalent to a single 130 m dish.
No cost estimates are as yet available for this new proposal. Nor has the NSF expressed any opinion on whether it is even interested. At the moment its only action at Arecibo has been to propose converting the observatory into an education center, one that is located far from anything, is hard to reach, and will likely see few students or visitors.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Spend $454M to put it in space, where it belongs
At least the locals seem amenable unlike the Hawaiians.
“the observatory’s head of radio astronomy,” in other words, somebody without a job, desperately trying to remain on the government gravy train.
” The staff consists of about 120 persons who work in different areas such as cooks, administrators, scientists, engineers, maintenance workers, technicians and telescope operators, ” So the taxpayer gets to pay about $3.5M per job – what a bargain! To quote Apollo 13 “Tell me this isn’t a government operation”. It also epitomizes government waste, when there is no constraints because you can pick John Q Public’s pocket, why should anyone care about the cost?
There was a time when observatories were privately funded. Palomar was built and operated that way. – and was a world class operation. Then academia got used to sucking on the government teat and became fat, lazy and careless.
A 3d space filling fractal job could fill that hole and balloons on tether above it provide directional info
Flat phased arrays are 1980s tech.
Like Goldstone, but unlike FAST, it had a radar.
I say put one in Meteor Crater.