Today, the National Science Foundation released video taken at the moment the Arecibo Radio Observatory's cables failed, allowing its massive instrument platform to crash into the dish below. In describing the videos, the NSF also talked a bit about the monitoring program that had put the cameras in place, ideas it had been pursuing for stabilizing the structure pre-collapse, and prospects for building something new at the site.
A quick recap of the collapse: the Arecibo dish was designed to reflect incoming radio radiation to collectors that hung from a massive, 900-ton instrument package that was suspended above it. The suspension system was supported by three reinforced concrete towers that held cables that were anchored farther from the dish, looped over the towers, and then continued on to the platform itself. Failure of these cables eventually led to the platform dropping into the dish below it.
The filming was so precise because they knew it was inevitable. The site was being decommissioned anyway.
Nonetheless, the film is a great metaphor for our nation's current approach to science and to funding infrastructure in general. We're just letting it collapse.
Posts: 12759 | Location: Williamsburg, VA | Registered: 19 July 2005
I would love to see those cables in super slow-mo as they snapped. Pretty amazing. I'm glad the drones were in place so we could see it... and I'm glad they listened to their engineers and cleared the place out beforehand.
Posts: 35428 | Location: West: North and South! | Registered: 20 April 2005
