Arecibo wasn’t the only shutdown recommended, if outside funding couldn’t be secured. The NRAO’s Very Long Baseline Array has a similar recommendation. The solar telescope at Sac Peak in New Mexico will be going, going, …. Arecibo just gets a lot more publicity.

Didn’t Pete Dominici save VLBA from cuts (and The Robert C Byrd telescope at Green Bank has long been protected by … Robert C Byrd)? In any case, all national facilities are subject to earmarks; Arecibo is unfortunate in that competition because it has no voting members of Congress (and Hillary is about as close as it gets via the Cornell connection, but Cornell don’t themselves pursue earmarks). As for the solar telescope you’re referring to, I confess I don’t really know enough to say anything.

We shouldn’t be comparing 10 million dollars to the NSF astronomy budget when considering savings, but rather 4-5ish million dollars (the NSF is not calling to cut astronomy funding altogether, although the cuts it is proposing might effectively shut down astronomy there). As for it being replaced with better newer telescopes, which are those? Which ones will have planetary radar? The limited angular range of Arecibo is, indeed, a big weakness; on the other hand, the extra size that resulted in that limited pointing range also gives us great sensitivity. The large proposed Chinese FAST telescope is a candidate to do what Arecibo does (at least in terms of passive observing) and will be pointable via its adaptive surface, but why not wait to see how it works before trashing Arecibo? The Senior Review mentioned the SKA as a successor (whilst also not recommending any NSF commitment to building the SKA, understandable at present given the cost) but that’s years down the road.

No one’s claiming that the telescope (or any telescope) is going to last forever. The issue is why it’s thought that now is the right time (particularly given the potential cost of decomissioning which, if the closure happened too soon for other telescopes to pick up the slack, would look pretty silly).

As for ‘the community decided’, I think that’s potentially a rather idealistic opinion regarding how these things come to pass.

In any case, the money that funds most astronomy research is appropriated by politicians from taxpayers. We can hardly whine if the people’s representatives have opinions that differ from ours, particularly given that they indirectly are the source of our cash. In an ideal world, it wouldn’t happen. In this one, it always has and always will; the apparent amount of it may vary, but an Arecibo earmark is hardly the best example of a really heinous scientific earmark (of course, we all have our biases and none of us will agree on what those earmarks are); after all, thanks to Cornell’s policy against earmarks and Puerto Rico’s lack of voting representation in Congress, Arecibo might well have been picked in part because it was politically vulnerable.

http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/04/25/clinton-introduces-a-familiar-looking-arecibo-bill

Phil, don’t say you don’t like earmarks. You like them when they suit you, which is what everyone else says. This is why earmarks are a problem.

Ethan is correct – NSF wants to use its $$$ for a much better telescope. Why this falls on deaf ears is beyond me.

This is the exact same problem that the VLBA has – it’s basically done the science it was designed to do, time to move on to newer and better instruments and telescopes.

Clinton’s bill is the worst possible way to handle the situation from astronomy’s point of view. It’s an unfunded mandate, trying to force the NSF to shift money to a project that is lower on the scientific community’s list of priorities than currently funded projects. This would be the equivalent of forcing DoE to shift funding from the LHC to support more experiments on the Tevatron.

… “Sure, some some of the science can be done on the VLA and other projects but it has the unique status of the largest single Radio Telesope in history. It’s past and future value can be not be underestimated.”

Ah, but can Arecibo’s future value be over estimated? The range between over and under is what the Senior Review Committee had to deal with given the projected budget constraints the NSF gave them. (Those can be argued I think I seem some reference about.)

I am very much in favor of continued funding for Arecibo. But discussion of that outside of the context of Senior Review Committee report seems to be rather pointless and without full knowledge. I wish I had more!

George