You haven't heard of Blue Origin?

Yes, we all have.

Note that Bezos has targetted Blue Origin merely as a tourist joyride up to the edge of our earthly atmosphere. He is making very slow expensive slow progress.

Meanwhile, Musk has SpaceX working on a greatly greater scale that is making tremendous progress week by week, to far beyond earth, as opposed to the Bezos (and NASA) scale yearly crawl.

All quite a big question of scale and momentum!!


Aside: Paul Allen of Microsoft funded a radio telescope array for SETI...

Could Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer of Microsoft be persuaded to follow up with a new Arecibo telescope?


Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Excellent news, Puerto Rico government has allocated $8 million to rebuild Arecibo radio telescope!!

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Excellent news, Puerto Rico government has allocated $8 million to rebuild Arecibo radio telescope!!

Of a total $400 million required. But it's a start and might encourage the likes of NASA. Hopefully they don't break the new one.

There has been a couple of clarifications posted.
The $8million would appear to be for site clearance and concept design work for a replacement dish system, with current guestimates at the final cost of a new large dish telescope coming in between $500million and $1billion (very much dependant on what the features and "frilly bits" are)
One thing that is still not clear is the status of the control room and other telescopes on the site. My guess is that the control room, while physically intact, will need a substantial amount of work to sort it out so it will be fully usable while the smaller telescopes, that appear to have escaped direct damage, may have suffered some damage to their data and control links which will need to be resolved so they can function properly.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

There has been a couple of clarifications posted.
The $8million would appear to be for site clearance and concept design work for a replacement dish system, with current guestimates at the final cost of a new large dish telescope coming in between $500million and $1billion (very much dependant on what the features and "frilly bits" are)
One thing that is still not clear is the status of the control room and other telescopes on the site. My guess is that the control room, while physically intact, will need a substantial amount of work to sort it out so it will be fully usable while the smaller telescopes, that appear to have escaped direct damage, may have suffered some damage to their data and control links which will need to be resolved so they can function properly.

What a waste. Will they look after the next one better?

Are there any plans to replace the telescope?

Are there any plans to replace the telescope?

Yes, very much so to take advantage of the natural hollow that was the Arecibo Telescope.

The problem is for gaining funding...


Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)