Radio Telescope Has Military Uses? 186
schnippy writes "A joint Mexico-U.S. effort to build a monster radio telescope in Mexico is causing concerns because the project, the Large Millimeter Telescope, is part of a U.S. Defense Department effort to develop the target acquisition and directed-energy technology needed for anti-satellite warfare." From the article: " Supporters said links between science and the military are nothing new and emphasized the telescope being assembled on the 15,000-foot Sierra Negra in the state of Puebla wont be some kind of Star Wars defense outpost."
The Force! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The Force! (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The Force! (Score:3, Informative)
I know what you're all thinking... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I know what you're all thinking... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I know what you're all thinking... (Score:1)
Re:I know what you're all thinking... (Score:2)
Re:I know what you're all thinking... (Score:1)
Not after this thing comes online anyway.
Darn (Score:5, Funny)
That's a shame. Puebla does look remarkably similar to Tatooine...
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Nice opening line... (Score:5, Funny)
Why does this sound to me like a "bad idea"? This would be a great start for a thriller/action movie ...
Re:Nice opening line... (Score:4, Funny)
Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis?
Re:Nice opening line... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh! And a pocket protector!
And the movie needs lots of really big sci-fi guns shooting electriciy or plasma and there should be tons of absolutely gorgeous bigboobed ladies! Some of which could be beautiful Astec ghosts...
*insert huge grin here*
Seriously who wouldn't pay to watch that? Think "Falling Down" http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0106856/ [imdb.com] combined with "Doom" http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0419706/ [imdb.com], "Poltergeist" http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0084516/ [imdb.com], "Ghost Busters" http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0087332/ [imdb.com] and any big boobs porn flick (without the porn).
Hmm I think I need to listen to Deadbolt now... Deadbolt and Man or Astroman? should obviously both be major contributors to the soundtrack
Re:Nice opening line... (Score:1)
Neither. This calls for a slightly geeky, Gordon Freeman type of hero. It's a radio telescope, after all. Someone who's capable of rewiring stuff to emit a blast of anti-zombie RF energy, but isn't afraid of getting stuck in with a blunt instrument when necessary.
I vote Nicholas Cage.
Re:Nice opening line... (Score:2)
Re:Nice opening line... (Score:2)
Richard Dean Anderson?
Re:Nice opening line... (Score:2)
This thing is Frikkin Goldeneye.
Re:Nice opening line... (Score:1)
Bruce Campbell [imdb.com]
Re:Nice opening line... (Score:2)
1st, Clearly its Vin Diesel.
2nd, it can't be Tom Cruise b/c if you had seen south park he is 'in the closet' and won't come out.
Re:Nice opening line... (Score:1)
"No Mr Bush, it was not a Star Wars project....yes..yes sir. No, no we had no idea the volcano was going to erupt....yes, yes we are very sorry about your satellite....."
Fee Fie Foe Fum! (Score:1)
Be they alive or be they dead,
I'll grind their bones to make my gas! [slashdot.org]
If only Ash had known about that in Army of Darkness... (Hmm, "to make my un-lead"?)
Re:Nice opening line... (Score:2)
Sounds no worse than putting telescopes on top of Mauna Kea to me.
and what if it is? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and what if it is? (Score:2)
Think of it as stealing someone elses work and ambition, and then using the result of that work for some evil purpose the original inventor never would have approved of. For example, say you wrote code for a program that helped cure cancer, and then some insurance com
Quote (Score:4, Funny)
Offensive weapon (Score:5, Insightful)
Since the article doesn't explicitly state it, what the Mexicans are worried about is that the U.S. of A. will try and use that gigantic dish to fry satellites.
Methinks they doth protest to much in the article.
Anyways:
I found two sites, one saying it's designed to pick up 'wavelengths of 1 to 3 millimeters' and the other saying "to operate between 100 and 300 gigahertz (GHz)"
If they really have military uses in mind (even as a backup) then I'm guessing we won't find out how many watts it can transmit. I did a decent google search and came up empty.
And to make a long post longer, I'm going to bring up an old post I read before (slightly modified)
Re:Offensive weapon (Score:5, Informative)
The last thing you want within miles of a sensitive radio telescope is any kind of powerful transmitting equipment, as it would probably fry the detectors, and prevent any kind of astronomical observation. Since many other countries are involved in the telescope, at least at the advisory level, I can't imagine any kind of actual military testing at the site. In any case, there are very few powerful compact sources in the 100-300 GHz range (which is one of the reasons why astronomy in this band is difficult)
The most likely military application is the optics control required to get a telescope of this size and surface accuracy to work efficiently. That wouldn't involve any transmissions from the site.
Re:Offensive weapon (Score:1)
and read a certain way, this quote (from TFA) would support that viewpoint. Maybe I misread "long-range energy directed devices" to mean "directed [radar] energy."
I dug a diff article out of google's cache [64.233.167.104] which basically says that yes, they could use something like the LMT as a weapon, but it's not li
Re:Offensive weapon (Score:2)
Then again "long-range energy directed devices" is sufficiently diffuse to reference just about anything from a golfball to a deathstar
Re:Offensive weapon (Score:2)
And yes, there is good evidence to suggest the mirror thing works.
Re:Offensive weapon (Score:2)
Also, I don't know how much power a good ham radio can transmit, but isn't it in the tens or hundreds of watts? That increases the output of the array I suggested by an order or two of magnitude.
Re:Offensive weapon (Score:2)
Fry the detectors? (Score:2)
I doubt this is true. A radiotelescope is essentially a radar set without the transmit side. It would seemingly be trivial to outfit the telescope with a blanker that would protect the sensitive receive side while transmitting. If what you are saying was true, radar would be impossible - the first time th
Re:Offensive weapon (Score:2, Insightful)
IMO this is a bad thing, as now a telescope that should only be used for peaceful research will also become a military target during times of war.
Re:Offensive weapon (Score:2)
Almost anything which is useful for measuring and locating things is also good for helping blow them up. This doesn't mean we shouldn't do this kind of science. Sure, the military might be able to use it,
Re:Offensive weapon (Score:2)
Not only that, while I do think that the US government works secretly on nasty projects to do weapons research -- I don't think this is how they do it: with construction mostly financed by and carried out in another
Let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is happening is just common sense. There is an expensive project that will benefit scientists. At the same time, the DoD is undergoing a project that will need that exact same piece of equipment. We can either build two of these things and set tax payers back a small hunk of change, or we can build one. Take government money, and take the strings attached.
Now while making government funded facilities duel use makes perfect sense, you can easily argue that this whole Star Wars thing is a big waste of time and money. I personally wouldn't mind a nice big cozy shield of lasers or what not to knock the unlikely ballistic nuke out of the sky. That said, there is a cost benefit analysis that goes along with this. If an impenetrable shield of d00m could be erected for the cost of one month worth of operations in Iraq, I would say go for it. If instead it is going to cost enough bankrupt the nation, obviously it isn't worth spending money on such a remote danger.
Summary:
Duel use facilities when getting government funding to save tax payers: Good.
Star Wars in general: Maybe not so good.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:2)
Duel use facilities when getting government funding to save tax payers: Good."
Perhaps, "duel" would be the wrong choice of word here
Jokes apart, the parent poster does have a valid point. While the use of military funding to finance a fundamental research project may initially sound like a good idea, it is also something that should be very carefully considered. While defence funded projects have benefited basic science in direct or indirect ways, it is not guaranteed to do so. Even if this fun
The Stanford Dish: Nuclear Explosions in Space (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:1, Flamebait)
The facility in question is used to shoot down nukes. India's facilities are used to make them. The DoD doesn't have much worry that the civilians working the radio telescope will use the information they might see to build nukes. While radio telescopes mi
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:2)
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:2)
A radio telescope is something with an antenna (the dish) and a receiver.
A RADAR is something with an antenna (the dish) and a transmitter/receiver pair (commonly known as tranceiver).
Now, spot the similarity...
You can't add a telescope feature to a radar dish, it is inherently built-in. You just choose not to transmit. You can have a radio telescope and a radar without the dish but you always will have a receiver and an antenna involved in both.
Tinfoil hat (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Tinfoil hat (Score:2)
Silly. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Silly. (Score:1)
Recall that for some time after 9/11 America was so bloodthirsty for revenge that the little offenses (that we'd normally get our collective panties in a twist over) didn't matter. Collateral damage was a non-issue; the US military had free reign to drop whatever the hell they wanted to whenever the hell they wanted to, and nobody was going to stop them. In fact, we were encouraging them.
Our revolution wasn't as great an offense to the British as the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were to us, so
Re:Silly. (Score:3, Interesting)
The US will hold out for a technical win in Iraq, but when they leave Iraq will still be the same as it was under Saddam.
So yes, they will effectively lose to an enemy who fights dirty because they have less to lose.
Re:Silly. (Score:4, Informative)
Interviewers found that 71% of those questioned said things were currently very or quite good in their personal lives, while 29% found their lives very or quite bad.
The BBC News website's World Affairs correspondent, Paul Reynolds, says the survey shows a degree of optimism at variance with the usual depiction of the country as one in total chaos.
The findings are more in line with the kind of arguments currently being deployed by US President George W Bush, he says.
Re:Silly. (Score:2)
Re:Silly. (Score:2)
One I can think of off the top of my head is that if a large proportion of the population does not want you ruling them, you will eventually f
Re:Silly. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Silly. (Score:2)
You only need to look at any news channel/website to see that the war in Iraq is *not* over. As another poster says, the US is going for a technical win, then will get out ASAP. The country will then most likely descend into anarch
Re:Silly. (Score:2)
Not always true. This tactic worked for the Americans in the WoI, it is how the Americans neutralized the support of Tories in the south, especially in the second half of the war.
Most North Americans, outside of Massachusetts and neighboring areas, act
Re:Silly. (Score:5, Informative)
1) The Continental Army fought much the same way as the British army. The idea that the Americans 'hid behind rocks and trees' while the British fought in lines is a tired old chestnut with no basis in fact. Both sides used skirmishers, light troops who fought from cover, to great effect. The Brits were unhappily surprised by the lethality and range of the American rifles, but in general the US Army was beaten in almost every engagement except for the critical battles of Saratoga and Cowpens.
http://theamericanrevolution.org/battles.asp [theamerica...lution.org]
2) to suggest that the Americans have somehow routinely relied on deception and ambush thereafter is simply misreading the facts. Until recently, American militaries were NOT known for their subtlety - the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, WW1, WW2, Korea, and even the failed efforts in Vietnam were almost entirely about a standup, face-to-face battle where the US won more by its overwhelming resources than by its surprise attacks or deception.
Again, this isn't meant as a flame, I simply think your interpretation is entirely wrong. Your parallel of "the US abandoned honor in war = Iraqi terrorists abandoning honor" thereby implies very dangerously some sort of 'moral equivalency' between the American revolutionaries and the Iraqi jihadis. While I recognize that no doubt SOME Iraqis are fighting for purely nationalist reasons, it's not their main motivation.
I would argue that the Shiite uprisings against Saddam that we failed to support (to our shame) were a far closer parallel to the American revolution.
Re:Silly. (Score:3, Informative)
You're looki
Re:Silly. (Score:2)
They are morally equivalent for the vast majority of the fighting, despite your leaders consistent efforts to label anyone fighting in Iraq as a 'terrorist'. Sure, some jihad folks have gone there, but they are in the minority. Most of the fighting is being by groups who e
Re:Silly. (Score:2)
Only if you don't include the moral aims of the revolution in your overall moral calculus.
Re:Silly. (Score:2)
Depends who you put on each side ;-) But, I admit I know little about the two events, other than they were both pretty important in shaping America.
Re:Silly. (Score:2)
Aliens [yahoo.com], not Russians and Chinese.
Re:Silly. (Score:2)
Re:Silly. (Score:2)
These tactics suppressed Loyalists in the south for most of the war, preventing penetration and resupply by British forces.
Sure, we hear about the battles, but it was the little skirmishes and terror/propaganda campaigns that kept the British army from really establishing a foothold.
These tactics are what enabled the Continental Regulars to move effectively overland, to enlist militia units (since no thr
"Large Millimetre Telescope"? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:"Large Millimetre Telescope"? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:"Large Millimetre Telescope"? (Score:2)
Simple Conversion for Americans: A Millimeter is
construction progress (Score:5, Informative)
Dr Evil's base is nearly complete muhahaha (Score:2, Funny)
the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Its a big friggin space gun (Score:2)
and...
"It is a very high-powered, focused radar beam that could be used to find an enemy object out in space and, having found it, zero in on it,"
So the secondary mission is to kill stuff, in outer space, with a focused radar beam. Basically this is like putting a night vision 100x scope on a
-Brought to you by Capitalism. We care, because we know you have money.
Re:Its a big friggin space gun (Score:1)
Re:Its a big friggin space gun (Score:2)
Is it even a weapon? (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds exactly like what it is, a telescope using radio waves to detect objects with higher precision and farther range. The submitter made it sound like it was some sort of weaponry able to use the radio waves to distort, defend, or even attack (read the star wars defense post comment). This is like calling a binoculars, radars, or sonars weapons. They are tools used for detection and has no real defense or offense capability, besides aiding in defense efforts.
Re:Is it even a weapon? (Score:2)
If you think simple common 60 years old tech radar has no offense ability, you should try to stick your head directly before some. I bet you will be thinking such a nonsense no more.
It's certainly not a weapon (Score:4, Insightful)
Is anybody seriously thinking these things work anything like a simple ship's radar? Yes, you could make them into weapons. By scrapping them, then building new, emitting antennas in their place. These things are receivers. They don't send. If we would try deep space astronomy by sending stuff at stuff billions of lightyears away, we would take 2*billions of years to get any results. The pace of space science may seem slow, but it's certainly faster than that.
Re:It's certainly not a weapon (Score:2)
You can read more about it here:
http://www.naic.edu/~pradar/pradar.htm [naic.edu]
And yes, IAARA.
Re:Is it even a weapon? (Score:2)
Just one question: (Score:2)
Re:Just one question: (Score:1)
Re:Just one question: (Score:1)
Contact (Score:1, Funny)
That part of the movie was based on fact (Score:3, Interesting)
Some thought that it was designed to steer Soviet bombers away from the U.S. and fool them into dropping their bombs on "less valuable" real estate, i.e. Puerto Rico. The observatory had to put up a big security gate to discourage possible vandalism.
Random (Score:1)
At the same time NASA winds down science (Score:2)
More likely it will shoot down everyone else's spy and comm sats. Expect to see a bunch of mysterious 'failures' from competing countries.
Note the use of the term "laser metrology" (Score:3, Informative)
"The Large Millimeter Wave Telescope (LMT) program is the U.S.-complement to a coordinated U.S.-Mexico project. The DARPA program is providing technology assessments for design, systems integration and technology-leading metrology for a 50-meter aperture, fully steerable millimeter wave radio telescope. The fully developed telescope features a sophisticated laser metrology system to maintain precise alignment of the optics, and real-time closed loop adaptive control to maintain a near-perfect parabolic surface at all pointing angles and under most environmental conditions."
Metrology: the science that deals with measurement.
Re:Note the use of the term "laser metrology" (Score:2)
Re:Note the use of the term "laser metrology" (Score:2)
Calm Down (Or get more paranoide) Crazy Hippies. (Score:3, Insightful)
A Mexico-U.S. effort to build a monster joint (Score:2, Informative)
Birds and Bugs (Score:2)
Instead of cooking a perfectly good satellites, there either should be a remote way of hacking satellites to make them friendly, or teams that go up and modify them. If these guys had been watching Mission Impossible (1966-1973 tv show) instead of playing violent video games as kids
Usable telescope for scientists... (Score:4, Informative)
The military does this all the time. They fund a huge array of projects, many of which don't directly have a production-level deliverable, but which extend science and engineering so that the next funded project can come up with a military-use prototype.
imaginary lines are meant to be crossed (Score:3, Insightful)
Because, we all know that scientists would NEVER cross that line, right?
Ironic (Score:3, Interesting)
The link between science and military goes back to the dawn of science.
Galileo based his design for a telescope on that of a military field glass (used for seeing enemies from afar). He used it to study the motion of the stars, the first one to do so, and helped to usher in the age of enlightenment.
A little concerned (Score:4, Informative)
1) In the search of the ideal place to build the telescope it was required to do meteorological studies which can be used to know with detail the water distribution underground of regions such as the state of Puebla. These can have positive repercussions in the use of water in the future.
2)It will be necessary to build a rode or highway that will reach the peak of Sierra Negra, one that will be useful for the population of communities like Texmalaquilla.
3)The construction of the telescope will provide of new jobs, many of them to people who live in close communities to Sierra Negra.
4)The need of high tech communications for the LMT (Large Millimeter Telescope) may lead to the result that close by communities will benefit of a modern phone system, maybe based on fiber optics with access to the Internet.
5)Besides local impact, the LMT has already began the development of microwave laboratories and other type of technologies such as the measurement and production of high precision surfaces.
The high altitude is strong point of Sierra Negra for astronomical purposes but at the same time is a weak point since human work is affected because of the lack of oxygen. It is a sure thing that dorms will be installed at lower altitudes such as it occurs in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. It is probable that the telescope can be remotely operated without the astronomers need to climb higher than 3,000 -3,500 meters.
The media talks about this project as the most important achievement in the scientific history of Latin America and internationally as the biggest instrument of its kind. Last time I've hear a sales pitch like this one I was in high school and they were talking how great NAFTA was going to be. Sold as the first step into becoming a first world country. Now 13 years later we've got a disappearing middle class.
The main source I'm quoting is originally in Spanish http://www.inaoep.mx/~rincon/sierra_negra.html [inaoep.mx] written in 1997. I did a fast translation of it. As of now 90% of the construction has been completed and should be operational by the first quarter of 2006. I will now try to research what has actually happened and if this telescope has helped Puebla or not. I have relatives still living there and I will ask them what they have heard. I will post any significant findings for those that are interested in any type of followup.
Re: (Score:2)
A hell of a lot of basic research is DoD funded (Score:2, Informative)
Solar physics? Largely funded by the Air Force. They want to predict solar flares that may interfere with communication.
Astrophysics? Not by a majority percentage, but at least some funding will piggy back on laboratory duplication of the high temperatures and pressures that occur in nuclear weapons.
Internet? No further remarks necessary.
I will agree that
Re:Duh!!! (Score:1)
Re:Duh!!! (Score:1)
It wouldn't have to be a long range weapon. They could fly a suicide Cesna packed with explosives into the thing and destroy it.
Re:Duh!!! (Score:2)
Re:ScuttleMonkey? (Score:2)
Re:Arecibo is waaay bigger and fearsome (Score:2)