Drone Footage Shows the Shocking Collapse of the Arecibo Observatory (theverge.com) 112
A reader shares a report from The Verge: Today, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released shocking footage of the collapse of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The video, captured on December 1st, shows the moment when support cables snapped, causing the massive 900-ton structure suspended above Arecibo to fall onto the observatory's iconic 1,000-foot-wide dish.
The videos of the collapse were captured by a camera located in Arecibo's Operations Control Center, as well as from a drone located above the platform at the time of collapse. The operator of the drone was able to adjust the drone camera once the platform started to fall and capture the moment of impact. NSF, which oversees Arecibo, had been doing hourly monitoring of the observatory with drones, ever since engineers warned that the structure was on the verge of collapsing in November. The footage highlights the moment when multiple cables snapped, causing the platform to swing outward and hit the side of the dish. The collapse also brought down the tops of the three support towers surrounding Arecibo, where the cables had been connected to keep the platform in the air. Slashdot reader joshgs shares a petition to rebuild the Arecibo Observatory. "On December 1, the platform of the 305-meter radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory suffered a catastrophic collapse," the petition states. "This telescope had many capabilities that cannot be replaced by any existing or planned facility. It had the world's most powerful and most sensitive planetary radar system, providing unparalleled capacity to track and characterize near-Earth asteroids. The telescope was also a source of tourism, education, and pride for the people of Puerto Rico, inspiring many to pursue careers in science and technology."
"We ask Congress to allocate funding to build a new Arecibo radio telescope with greater capabilities than the previous telescope -- to maintain American leadership in planetary defense, astronomy, and ionospheric studies; and to inspire a new generation of scientists."
The videos of the collapse were captured by a camera located in Arecibo's Operations Control Center, as well as from a drone located above the platform at the time of collapse. The operator of the drone was able to adjust the drone camera once the platform started to fall and capture the moment of impact. NSF, which oversees Arecibo, had been doing hourly monitoring of the observatory with drones, ever since engineers warned that the structure was on the verge of collapsing in November. The footage highlights the moment when multiple cables snapped, causing the platform to swing outward and hit the side of the dish. The collapse also brought down the tops of the three support towers surrounding Arecibo, where the cables had been connected to keep the platform in the air. Slashdot reader joshgs shares a petition to rebuild the Arecibo Observatory. "On December 1, the platform of the 305-meter radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory suffered a catastrophic collapse," the petition states. "This telescope had many capabilities that cannot be replaced by any existing or planned facility. It had the world's most powerful and most sensitive planetary radar system, providing unparalleled capacity to track and characterize near-Earth asteroids. The telescope was also a source of tourism, education, and pride for the people of Puerto Rico, inspiring many to pursue careers in science and technology."
"We ask Congress to allocate funding to build a new Arecibo radio telescope with greater capabilities than the previous telescope -- to maintain American leadership in planetary defense, astronomy, and ionospheric studies; and to inspire a new generation of scientists."
Shocking? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was well understood that the thing was going to fall as it had lost cables prior to this. The actual collapse itself, while spectacular, took the path that things subject to gravity typically take.
Re:Shocking? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Shocking? (Score:4, Funny)
This has got to be the most autistic and heartless comment I've seen. Even by Slashdot standards.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you think shocked is a correct reaction to something that was well predicted and expected?
Disappointment, Angry, Upset, etc all could be valid, but Shocked?
Time to come out of the safe space and deal with the real world, I think - you seem more likely to have issues than the original poster.
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Because you think shocked is a correct reaction to something that was well predicted and expected?
Yes. Because I have this thing called empathy. What next your mother dies and you just shrug and say "well that was predicted from the moment she was born"?
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
It'd be sad, but if she was 90 years old, had been battling terminal cancer since 2015, and the doctor had given her 2 months to live, I wouldn't be shocked.
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Disappointment, Angry, Upset, etc all could be valid, but Shocked?
It's a subset of "Me Too'ism" - inflating the value of words for effect. It sounds ignorant and trashy as fuck because it is.
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Because you think shocked is a correct reaction to something that was well predicted and expected?
The only shocking thing is the political and managerial malfeasance leading up to this point. I would have predicted and expected that as well had I followed what has been going on there since the budget was cut starting in 2007 if not earlier.
Re:Shocking? (Score:5, Interesting)
You're modded funny but I don't get it, so I'll answer seriously. (Posting as AA to avoid the embarrassment of a big WHOOSH coming my way.)
This video isn't shocking. For me it was a combination of thrill, awe and sadness, but no shock here.
The headline however was annoying: I deeply dislike headlines that tell me how I'm supposed to feel about an event. I have a mind of my own and I decide what emotions a story evokes in me, thank you very much. Negative marks for Slashdot editors who parroted the sensationalist headline rather than using more neutral language, but who am I kidding.
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But the dish... could've been dented. [youtube.com]
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You just literally destroyed the irony meter for the entire universe.
You're complaining about someone else's lack of empathy while using "autistic" as a pejorative.
That's some real liberal posting logic you're displaying up there.
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Outstanding troll! I've rarely seen /. engage with one so much. U winz teh intertubz 4 2day!
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I didn't find that shocking at all.
You weren't shocked that the camera footage panned away at the precise moment of collapse?
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"I didn't find that shocking at all. "
Exactly!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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It was the communist aliens. (Score:2)
In the video I think I saw Cuban cigar shaped object hover momentarily just before the cables snapped!
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In the video I think I saw Cuban cigar shaped object hover momentarily just before the cables snapped!
As opposed to a non Cuban cigar shaped object? What kind of cigars do you smoke?
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What kind of cigars do you smoke?
Whatever brand Sagan did, I suppose. His novel did all it could. Jodie Foster and John Hurt, James Woods, William Fichtner, David Morse, and many, many others without profile. Oh El Radar's ear to the Cosmos wasn't a can on a string by comparison to other platforms brought to bear since its erection, but apparently to the bean counters, close enough.
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In the video I think I saw Cuban cigar shaped object hover momentarily just before the cables snapped!
As opposed to a non Cuban cigar shaped object? What kind of cigars do you smoke?
Whatever brand Sagan did, I suppose. ...
Sorry, my point wasn't about the "brand" but the "shape". Unless I'm missing something, all cigars are pretty much shaped the same -- you know, like a cigar. :-)
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Sometime a cigar is just a cigar.
It may have even been the one the drone pilot was smoking as the centre structure started to move. Must have been one hell of a brown down below moment for that pilot! I would have found it very hard not to spit my cigar and run like hell.
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As opposed to a non Cuban cigar shaped object? What kind of cigars do you smoke?
My guess is the kind not filled with tobacco.
I wouldn't say shocking. (Score:3)
I'd say it's more sad than shocking, as we all knew it happened already. It's just another reminder of how shit this year has been all the way around. Not something we needed or asked for, but that's what nearly every aspect of this year has been.
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Why not prevent it? (Score:4)
Why didn't they repair the observatory after they first saw part of it break? Is it a money thing? Is it too remote to get to? Did someone make a bad call? Why did they just wait around for it to collapse?
Re:Why not prevent it? (Score:5, Informative)
It is a funding thing. It was underfunded for many years.
Re:Why not prevent it? (Score:5, Informative)
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Partially a funding thing, but it all happened fairly quickly so there wasn't the time to do what was needed without it having been previously planned
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Partially a funding thing, but it all happened fairly quickly so there wasn't the time to do what was needed without it having been previously planned
There was plenty of time to do what was needed since wire strands were found to be broken years ago. It took more than a decade of inadequate maintenance to reach this point.
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True, but from when it got the most attention when one of the cables completely failed there wasn't. There should have been routine maintenance and cable replacements going on, but they lacked the funding
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In addition to the funding thing there was a very real safety risk involved here as well. There wasn't a lot of time for reinforcement between when the first cable snapped and now, much less a way to plan the reinforcement safely.
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The structure is heavy enough that repairs are a major operation. During construction [naic.edu], they built the towers and the observation platform first, then built the dish underneath it.
The cables are 8 cm thick, IIRC, which means that replacing one cable requires the largest mobile cranes you can find (only a few on the continent, with long waiting lists), if not dismantling part of the dish so a structure can be built underneath the platform. I can easily see this taking a year of preparation followed by 6 month
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This. Since it could collapse at any moment (and did) there was no safe way to dismantle the dish and build a supporting scaffold because you'd be working under the part that fell down the entire time.
It was easiest and safest to allow it to collapse and then rebuild it with entirely new parts. Hopefully they'll be able to do so now.
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Because inspecting the rest of the platform is what you do before repairs, in order to know what to repair, if it's beyond repair, and if it's safe to repair.
In this case, it was not safe to repair as it didn't even survive through aerial inspection.
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Why didn't they repair the observatory after they first saw part of it break? Is it a money thing? Is it too remote to get to? Did someone make a bad call? Why did they just wait around for it to collapse?
Watch the videos, then imagine you had a repair crew building supports when the collapse happened.
You're probably losing some contractors.
For all our tech construction still needs to work with things that are really heavy and have a tremendous amount of energy when they start moving. And unlike the past there's not a lot of appetite for losing a few workers during a big project.
That's why, when a structure becomes unstable enough, it's no longer an option to send in people to stabilize it. Your best option
Surreal, not shocking (Score:4, Insightful)
It is almost surreal knowing that the [Arecibo] observatory featured in Contact (1997) [imdb.com] and GoldenEye (1995) [imdb.com] is no more.
NPR even had a blurb [npr.org] about how sentimental this is.
Shame it couldn't be saved. Hopefully a newer, better one will be rebuilt in its place.
Re:Surreal, not shocking (Score:4, Interesting)
Shame it couldn't be saved. Hopefully a newer, better one will be rebuilt in its place.
One already has. Unfortunately for us, it's in China. I think it's likely that the TMT will be built in China too. There is a good site for it on the Tibetan Plateau:
https://www.dangerousroads.org... [dangerousroads.org]
Re:Surreal, not shocking (Score:4, Interesting)
AFAIK, the new observatory in China will have a fraction of the transmission power that Arecibo had. That was its most unique value.
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We still have the VLA (Very Large Array), also featured in Contact.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap9... [nasa.gov]
Here's one of my photos of the VLA when I was camping across the country a few years ago:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com]
I didn't see it coming and it was that much more amazing. It was early and they weren't open but just seeing it was enough.
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Neither the VLA nor the recently completed Chinese dish are transmitters for RADAR capability. The VLA depends on the Goldstone dish for RADAR capability.
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Too bad not more movies and TV series used that as their sets so observatory could get more money. :(
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Shame it couldn't be saved. Hopefully a newer, better one will be rebuilt in its place.
It is a shame. I liked the idea of having it around.
OTOH, I don't think we should rush to rebuild it. There are plenty of other worthwhile science projects which need funding. A powerful radio transmitter/receiver needs to go into the queue just like any other proposal and funded based on what it will do, not what it did in the past.
Additionally, we shouldn't rush to rebuilt in the same spot. For all I know there are other good places to build which deserve to be considered. And given that "underfunded" is
NSF... (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Lucky shot (Score:2)
Rebuilding? I doubt it ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it worth the effort re-building the Arecibo telescope?
There is already a larger single dish one [msn.com] (500 metre) in China.
There are also telescope arrays in several places.
The Australian array [wikipedia.org] just released its mapping of the sky [phys.org].
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I was wondering the same thing. We have the VLA, and could expand that easily. A phased array of smaller antennas might be better. And Arecibo has always had a limited view of the sky.
Re:Rebuilding? I doubt it ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Rebuilding? I doubt it ... (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as I know the most special capability at Arecibo was the planetary radar. It would be nice to know if that capability can be reproduced at another facility, like one of the many large arrays, and how the cost would compare to the cost to repair Arecibo. I expect the answer is that it wouldn't be cost-effective to rebuild Arecibo, because I think the important piece was in the thing that just fell from the sky and is now a pile of rubble. So it would mean starting from scratch.
I consider this essentially political in that if Puerto Rico was a state this would be one of their highest profile federal facilities and their senators would make sure it didn't just starve for funding. But PR isn't a state, so the NSF has to make a cold cost-benefit decision that the scientific productivity doesn't justify the cost compared to spending that same money at another US facility. So if anything "rebuild Arecibo" is the wrong action item to take away from this. The right one is "make Puerto Rico a state."
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So if anything "rebuild Arecibo" is the wrong action item to take away from this. The right one is "make Puerto Rico a state."
As I recall Puerto Rico had voted on this at least once and they don't want to be a state.
Is the problem of not having a large dish in America? Or, is it a problem of not having a large dish in Puerto Rico? My guess is that there's plenty of good places for such a dish. Each with it's own pros and cons. If there was a couple US senators that represented Puerto Rico then they could ask for federal money to build a dish there but any state could have a senator that asks for federal money to build a dish i
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My guess is that there's plenty of good places for such a dish. Each with it's own pros and cons.
Puerto Rico was uniquely useful because of topography, low radio noise, and being closer to the equator.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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The thing about these dishes is they are each unique. The Wikipedia page for FAST has a nice comparison to the Arecibo telescope showing the kind of science done by them barely overlaps. "Bigger" does not mean "better". There are a lot more design criteria here.
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Is it worth the effort re-building the Arecibo telescope?
There is already a larger single dish one [msn.com] (500 metre) in China.
I think they should build the new one in Antarctica - close to the Stargate.
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Arecibo has 2 unique features:
1. powerful planetary radar, useful for studying asteroids. The only other radar system in the US is the one on Goldstone DSS-14. This is a 70-m dish, with a lower-power transmitter (500 kW vs. 1000 for Arecibo), making it less sensitive. DSS-14 also has other duties (it's part of the DSN).
2. lots of collection area (more than any array of smaller dishes), which results in a sensitive receiver.
Whether that's enough to warrant a replacement, is the question. Arecibo's scientific
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What's shocking to me (Score:2)
Reminds me of when they (think they) found the Higgs Boson. All the local news readers were trying to one-up each other on how stupid they were when it comes to science. I'm sorry, not being able to grasp the fundamentals of how atoms work is not something to be proud of.
Trump let it happen (Score:1)
If this happened under Obama, he would say Obama neglected Arecibo and let this happen. Yet when bad things happen in Trump's adminsitration nobody holds him accountable or calls him on things.
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Trump blames everything that happens under him on Obama too. I think the strategy is whatever happens that the government could have prevented gets blamed on the most recent Democrat in office.
It could actually make some sense if you think about it. Republicans are supposedly about smaller government and thus try to do less or remove anything that is doing something. Democrats believe that the government has a place in helping to manage things and try to actually build a government that does things. Obvious
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Whatever.
No matter who is in the White House there's going to be someone that blames POTUS for something beyond the control of the office.
Let's take the election as an example. Even though the election is for a federal office the election is managed by the states. One reason to oppose mail in ballots is because the president can mess with the US Postal Service, which is an executive agency of the federal government. Did Trump call for the removal of mailboxes to mess with the vote? Maybe. Here's an ide
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Nah, Trump's never seen Contact so I don't think he's even heard of this dish before. Never mind knowing Puerto Rico is even a part of the United States.
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Perhaps Trump hasn't seen Contact, but he has seen Puerto Rico. Trump has been to Puerto Rico in his first year as POTUS. I would think that at some point during that trip someone told him it's part of the USA.
Let's assume that Trump never heard of the Arecibo Observatory. Is it then his fault that it fell into disrepair? If they needed money to fix it, and Trump could somehow get them funds to do so, then why didn't someone contact him to get these funds?
Trump might be an ignoramus but his ignorance of
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I was being facetious. But I'm skeptical of your argument. Had engineers examined it even a couple of years ago, they likely would have found that even then it was damaged to the point of being too dangerous to safely work on. Now that we know how bad the cables were, anyone who's been up on the platform in the last few years is just lucky to have made it off.
No the real blame for this collapse goes back decades to previous administrations, if any blame can be apportioned at all.
900 ton suspended in the air (Score:2)
That must have been a very poor engineering decision.
With modern technology we should be able to reduce that to something like 0.9 ton.
Still standing? (Re:900 ton suspended in the air) (Score:1)
Perhaps there is technology to significantly reduce the weight that needs to be suspended over the dish. There's a very big engineering reason to not replace what was hanging there. It didn't fall down yet.
I remember having a discussion with a civil engineering student while at university and talking about how he learned that an overpass on the edge of town was not built correctly. It seems that the professors in the civil engineering program loved to have students go out an look at just how fucked up th
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I imagine you're right that there is some tech that could reduce it today. It is interesting though that 350 of that 900 tons was added in the '96-97 time frame during a technology upgrade. It was a failure in that relatively recent upgrade, one of the auxiliary cables that was added at the time, that started this year's chain of events.
Sounds just about right amount of weight necessary for an installation of all the gear necessary to install enough military grade big iron gear running Win NT or some Unix to crunch the incoming radar data volumes possible from the sensor upgrades they did. Then the amount of cables to power the big iron, fans and heavy cooling equipment and all the other stuff needed back then would have been very heavy indeed. I remember my old HP at that time with only 4 32 bit procs and four slot racks of scsi disks wei
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I remember having a discussion with a civil engineering student while at university and talking about how he learned that an overpass on the edge of town was not built correctly. It seems that the professors in the civil engineering program loved to have students go out an look at just how fucked up this bridge was.
Actually there are a lot of 60-100 year old metal truss bridges like that, all over the country - a vehicle hits a support member just the right way and it brings the bridge down. We had that happen in Washington state back in 2013, when the Interstate 5 Skagit River Bridge collapsed [wikipedia.org]. That lit a fire under our state government, who had been talking about the need to replace 200+ bridges of that fracture-critical style since the 2007 collapse in Minnesota... but, until one of our own bridges collapsed, were
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One of the advantages of cable stayed bridges is that redundancy within each cable prevents unanticipated failure, unless of course periodic maintanance and inspection is deferred as it was in the case of Arecibo. Any load bearing structure must be designed for inspection and regularly inspected for long term reliability.
This sucks (Score:2)
"poorly maintained"
This never had to happen, but so much money went to bullshit that there was none left for stuff to improve the human race.
However, it has been around for over half a century. I'm wondering had this not happened, it would've been decomissioned, demolished and (hopefully replaced) within the next 20 years?
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, ... (Score:1)
Couldn't be avoided, huh? (Score:2)
Nice job waiting until it collapses to notice a problem. I think PG&E would like to hire these same people to manage the care of their high voltage distribution lines out in the mountains.
Can we not anticipate this kind of wear and fatigue? Would it have killed to perform an inspection every now and then and maybe proactively change a cable or did they feel that it ought to have lasted another 100 years before it needed any maintenance?
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This is a perfect example of modern engineering's motto: 'Good enough for now'. Which had already started around the time the 'upgrade' was performed.
Re: Couldn't be avoided, huh? (Score:2)
As I said, it's possible that being as old as it is, it was going to be torn down and replaced in the near future anyway?
Maybe they let it fail as it did to save on demolition costs, I dunno.
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Nice job waiting until it collapses to notice a problem. I think PG&E would like to hire these same people to manage the care of their high voltage distribution lines out in the mountains.
I suspect those who noticed the problem years ago were ignored by management.
Can we not anticipate this kind of wear and fatigue? Would it have killed to perform an inspection every now and then and maybe proactively change a cable or did they feel that it ought to have lasted another 100 years before it needed any maintenance?
We can, with inspections which were apparently not done or were ignored.
Build it back better - Use current technology (Score:2)
That said, I am sure that many of the electronics were already updated. But, with the site unusable for a few years, those should also be looked at after the center piece and bowl rebuilds, not now.
Pe
Re: Build it back better - Use current technology (Score:2)
The whole rig was in bad need of repair, and likely very outdated. It would've been cheaper to let it collapse and then haul away the debris to make room for a newer, much more advanced system.
This seems to have been the perfect time for this to happen, as the world is focused on Covid, there would be much fewer personell on site, and China has a radio telescope of it's own which is no doubt much more advanced.
Whether this was really the case, I can't say, but it sure seems like it.
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NSF off the hook, site takes on new designation (Score:2)
Re:"Drone Footage"...New term for fixed camera? (Score:5, Informative)
I just watched the video, and there is footage from two cameras. The first is a fixed camera, but the second I believe is from a drone that was apparently inspecting the cables. It shows the cables starting to snap and then completely fail suddenly as the drone turns to show the equipment crash down.
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So the drone CAUSED the crash!
That downdraft must have been too much for that cable!
Or the extra pressure of being video taped might have been to much. I know I can go to pieces under too much pressure when being video tapped.
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I know you're being sarcastic, but I have a hard time believing the drone just happened to be focused on the cable at the moment it snapped without in some way being part of it. It seems too much of a coincidence. I watched several times and that cable break does seem to be the first one, not a response to one breaking on another tower. The article only talked about one drone being used once an hour to survey the cables. Presumably, it was checking every tower so it wouldn't hang around long.
Of course the d
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I know you're being sarcastic, but I have a hard time believing the drone just happened to be focused on the cable at the moment it snapped without in some way being part of it. It seems too much of a coincidence. I watched several times and that cable break does seem to be the first one, not a response to one breaking on another tower. The article only talked about one drone being used once an hour to survey the cables. Presumably, it was checking every tower so it wouldn't hang around long.
Of course the drone could not have "CAUSED" the snap, but I do wonder if it could have triggered it to happen at that moment instead of at some other point in the next hour - the straw that broke the camel's back. In terms of possible interactions, I'd be the most interested in the noise and whether it could have hit some frequency that did something.
Coincidences do happen. Lee Harvey Oswald somehow got his oddball book stocking job without prior knowledge that JFK was going to drive right under his quickly improvised sniper nest. He may very well have known that JFK was coming to Dallas and he may have moved there for that reason. But his advantage in being in the exact spot to do what he did is pure coincidence, either that or the conspiracy would have had to involve so many people that it would have been completely impossible to cover up without a co
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I know you're being sarcastic, but I have a hard time believing the drone just happened to be focused on the cable at the moment it snapped without in some way being part of it. It seems too much of a coincidence. I watched several times and that cable break does seem to be the first one, not a response to one breaking on another tower. The article only talked about one drone being used once an hour to survey the cables. Presumably, it was checking every tower so it wouldn't hang around long.
Of course the drone could not have "CAUSED" the snap, but I do wonder if it could have triggered it to happen at that moment instead of at some other point in the next hour - the straw that broke the camel's back. In terms of possible interactions, I'd be the most interested in the noise and whether it could have hit some frequency that did something.
The article mentioned daily flights, not hourly, which makes it a bit more of a coincidence, though maybe not a huge one.
How long was the flight in total? 10 minutes? 30? We didn't see the takeoff so we know at least some of the footage was edited out.
There's also a bit of a co-variance at work. I suspect a collapse is most likely when thermal stresses are at their max and the metal is weakest due to heating, mid to late afternoon in full sun, which is also when you're most likely to do your drone inspectio
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This is a camera that is clearly fixed in place. Is the new "buzz word" to call every bit of camera footage "drone footage"? or am I missing something?
The second half of the video apparently.
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The second half of the video apparently.
Yes.
The drone video is very stable. But toward the end, you can see it move away.
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The actual drone footage was quite spectacular actually. The drone was just metres away from the top of the tower and got a nice close up of the cable strands breaking before it's very eye so to speak. Very interesting and I'm sure the engineers will get some good data from that footage. See the Ars Technica article which has the full footage.
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The /. article does not link to the drone video.
But here is a video that plays the two videos one after another. Fixed camera and then the drone vid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Who reads the articles here...but the Verge article has the video embedded after the second paragraph. And the first link in the /. summary links to the NSF page on Arecibo which has the same video.