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#440
by
matthewkantar
on 15 Aug, 2023 16:35
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Clean up the site and turn it over to the locals, science there is a thing of the past, money spent will be wasted. Would be a dream come true for the locals in Hawaii.
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#441
by
jstrotha0975
on 15 Aug, 2023 18:59
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Hawaii won't let them build the 30 meter telescope, never mind a large radio telescope.
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#442
by
matthewkantar
on 15 Aug, 2023 19:10
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Hawaii won't let them build the 30 meter telescope, never mind a large radio telescope.
I mean Hawaii would welcome removal of the current installation.
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#443
by
Star One
on 15 Aug, 2023 20:58
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Hawaii won't let them build the 30 meter telescope, never mind a large radio telescope.
I mean Hawaii would welcome removal of the current installation.
I don’t think the Hawaiians who work there would think that. Or did you think no local people were scientists.
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#444
by
matthewkantar
on 15 Aug, 2023 21:24
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Hawaii won't let them build the 30 meter telescope, never mind a large radio telescope.
I mean Hawaii would welcome removal of the current installation.
I don’t think the Hawaiians who work there would think that. Or did you think no local people were scientists.
Exactly.
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#445
by
Eric Hedman
on 15 Aug, 2023 21:49
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#446
by
Blackstar
on 15 Aug, 2023 22:12
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I have been to Arecibo. Got to walk out to the central structure. It remains one of the coolest things I've done in my life.
The location is rather remote and not easy to get to. Without the dish, the only science that could be done there might be a nature facility. There are buildings, and some living quarters. It would not surprise me if the plans for a "science facility" are to use it for nature and biology studies out in the forest. Nobody is going to go there for anything astronomy-related now.
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#447
by
deadman1204
on 16 Aug, 2023 14:54
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#448
by
Paul451
on 16 Aug, 2023 18:02
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Clean up the site and turn it over to the locals, science there is a thing of the past, money spent will be wasted.
Unfortunately, they're facing the problems that a lot of end-of-life projects face, there's no funding for basic historical preservation. Not preserving the data, not documenting the code, not preserving historical buildings and artefacts, nor doing basic cleanup on the site. It's just being left to rot. 60 years of history.
[Aside: The site also has other co-located research facilities that are still operational.]
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#449
by
matthewkantar
on 16 Aug, 2023 20:18
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Clean up the site and turn it over to the locals, science there is a thing of the past, money spent will be wasted.
Unfortunately, they're facing the problems that a lot of end-of-life projects face, there's no funding for basic historical preservation. Not preserving the data, not documenting the code, not preserving historical buildings and artefacts, nor doing basic cleanup on the site. It's just being left to rot. 60 years of history.
[Aside: The site also has other co-located research facilities that are still operational.]
If historians are interested, let history money pay for it. NSF funds are for science, not sentimentality.
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#450
by
laszlo
on 16 Aug, 2023 20:35
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Clean up the site and turn it over to the locals, science there is a thing of the past, money spent will be wasted.
Unfortunately, they're facing the problems that a lot of end-of-life projects face, there's no funding for basic historical preservation. Not preserving the data, not documenting the code, not preserving historical buildings and artefacts, nor doing basic cleanup on the site. It's just being left to rot. 60 years of history.
[Aside: The site also has other co-located research facilities that are still operational.]
If historians are interested, let history money pay for it. NSF funds are for science, not sentimentality.
History is not sentimentality. It's what keeps us from repeating mistakes, re-inventing the wheel and otherwise wasting science money.
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#451
by
DanClemmensen
on 16 Aug, 2023 21:19
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Clean up the site and turn it over to the locals, science there is a thing of the past, money spent will be wasted.
Unfortunately, they're facing the problems that a lot of end-of-life projects face, there's no funding for basic historical preservation. Not preserving the data, not documenting the code, not preserving historical buildings and artefacts, nor doing basic cleanup on the site. It's just being left to rot. 60 years of history.
[Aside: The site also has other co-located research facilities that are still operational.]
If historians are interested, let history money pay for it. NSF funds are for science, not sentimentality.
History is not sentimentality. It's what keeps us from repeating mistakes, re-inventing the wheel and otherwise wasting science money.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
-- George Santayana
In particular, we are apparently at risk of losing the data. Why spend millions to gather data if you are not making provision to preserve it? It's a virtual certainty that there is information buried within the 50 years of Arecibo data that could be used to find the past history of something we will recognize only in the future, and often a longer timeline results in higher precision. The lesson to learn: spend a little time ans money now for archiving and curation of data from our current experiments like JWST and Mars rovers.
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#452
by
ccdengr
on 16 Aug, 2023 21:37
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#453
by
eeergo
on 16 Aug, 2023 21:57
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#454
by
Paul451
on 16 Aug, 2023 22:17
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And this is not the first important project where it's happened. (Hell, it might be more common than not.) We nearly lost a tonne of irreplaceable Apollo footage, except for a grassroots project by interested amateurs. NASA is kind of notorious for this kind of stuff.
Archiving scientific data takes money and effort, and is generally an ongoing project.
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#455
by
DanClemmensen
on 16 Aug, 2023 22:41
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In particular, we are apparently at risk of losing the data.
According to https://news.utexas.edu/2021/05/10/priceless-astronomy-data-saved-after-collapse-of-arecibo-telescope/ all the data were supposed to be moved to TACC starting in 2021.
Not the documentation or the interpreter software or even the specialized equipment needed to run some of it - as reported a few posts back. Without that, raw data will soon be as good as gibberish, if not immediately.
This is why I included curation. Just storing the data is not enough. Curation includes all that stuff, but it also includes mundane stuff like making copies for redundant geographically-separated backup, copying from obsolete media to new media, etc.
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#456
by
Star One
on 16 Aug, 2023 23:00
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And this is not the first important project where it's happened. (Hell, it might be more common than not.) We nearly lost a tonne of irreplaceable Apollo footage, except for a grassroots project by interested amateurs. NASA is kind of notorious for this kind of stuff.
Archiving scientific data takes money and effort, and is generally an ongoing project.
You paint a depressing picture here. I know that there have projects where stuff has nearly been lost due to the data being held on defunct methods of data storage. Like with the modern Domesday book in the UK where it was all stored on laserdisc and if not for CAMiLEON project the data could have been lost.
https://www.historyofinformation.com/detail.php?id=1661
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#457
by
deadman1204
on 17 Aug, 2023 15:29
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I agree that managing the data is important.
However, restoring the buildings and preserving them? Thats a waste of NSF funds. We can have vague feel good quotes about history all day long, but constantly paying money for upkeep on some buildings in the jungle that no one will visit isn't "preventing us from making the mistakes of the past".
Its just a constant fiscal drain on buildings that serve literally no purpose.
No one is gonna go there except the people who live in the area. There is no point. Why spend millions on pointless buildings that can go to new science instead? Or simply go towards further processing of existing data.
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#458
by
ccdengr
on 17 Aug, 2023 15:39
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Not the documentation or the interpreter software or even the specialized equipment needed to run some of it ...
It's not clear to me that some of that stuff existed in a usable form at Arecibo before the collapse either, except the last generation. Arecibo has been operating since the mid-60s and obviously computing and storage have evolved. I imagine that for each specific observing run, the investigators got the data and have it at their home institutions.
NASA, at least the planetary side, has tried to address these issues with the Planetary Data System.
https://pds.nasa.gov/datasearch/keyword-search/search.jsp?q=arecibo shows quite a few data collections, though I doubt this is all of the NASA-funded stuff that was ever done there.
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#459
by
Blackstar
on 20 Aug, 2023 02:47
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Art by Michael Whelan for
The Songs Of Distant Earth (Arthur C Clarke, 1985 edition). You can see what inspired it.