Comments on: Travel, Politics, and other Randomness

By: Doc Kinne

Doc Kinne — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:40:53 +0000

As you may or may not know, I have been in the “De-orbit Hubble” camp for the last couple of years. I’ve seen estimates that say that for the price of keeping Hubble going, we could build a newer, larger space telescope. Insofar as visible wavelengths are concerned, adaptive optics have given ground-based scopes on Earth better resolution than Hubble. So, I do think that Hubble’s money should be re-directed.

Arecibo…I’m not so sure about. I’m more familiar with what is coming down the pipe in wavelengths shorter than radio so I don’t think I can make an informed judgement with regard to Arecibo. But you’re right – sometimes you need to put the old toys away to get the new ones.

On the other hand, unfortunately, it also says something about our priorities that we need to make these types of choices in the face of the activities of the current political climate. I can only hope that China or India, like Russia did 50 years ago, jolt us into realizing again what is truly important and we start again investing in the future of knowledge instead of building the useless paper walls that are the political fashion nowadays.

By: Manuel

Manuel — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:14:51 +0000

Dear Pamela, great work your doing I love your podcast and admire your dedication, but sometimes you got to think on your resting need in order to keep productive and… happy. The more “work” you do the more it will appear from here or from there. Is never ending. I know sometimes you have simple to face hard moments in our professional life. Keep your agenda under surveillance, and if you need to, impose PamelaÂ¬Â¥s religious time in it.

Keep presenting us with your post I love to hear!

(Sorry for my English Iâ€šÃ„Ã´m still learning how to get Vista doing the thing I need)

By: Freiddie

Freiddie — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:01:26 +0000

Why does science always have to depend on money?
I wonder what would a group of people in an alternate universe (where those telescopes weren’t destroyed) would see with these telescopes. Are we going to miss a lot of data? We may never know.

By: John M.

John M. — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:36:37 +0000

Please post the Improbable Universe recording when it’s done. That sounds interesing..

By: MHA

MHA — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:33:46 +0000

I sympathize! I’m also not a morning person.

For a moment, when I saw the picture next to your travel paragraph, I thought you were going to say you were going to be at Arecibo soon, and I was going to ask you to say hi to my friend Dave. He’s down there for a year (he usually teaches in California) and says I should come visit. I guess this may be my last chance!

By: Stuart

Stuart — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:49:40 +0000

As far as I understand it, the US National Science Foundation had to cut back $30 million from the ground-based astronomy budget. That meant cutting off at least two big projects out of those they have going – Greenbank, VLA, VLBA and Arecibo. Part of the motivation is to provide money for ALMA which is now under construction. No doubt there is some astro-politics involved in the decision too.

I agree that there comes a time when it no longer makes sense to keep funding an existing project because it is no longer producing first-rate science. However, Arecibo is still doing great work and is still the largest single-dish radio telescope on the planet. The chairman of the review committee, Roger Blanford, even stated that “All of these telescopes are productive… All of them are good for another decade or so to do front-ranked science.”

In the end it comes down to how much money there is to spread around and the US seems (from an outside perspective) to be cutting back on science funding. That is a great pity. Especially when you realise that it is perhaps a hundred thousand times less than the cost of a war.