The massive Arecibo Observatory radio telescope, made famous in the James Bond movie GoldenEye and paid homage to in the classic Nintendo 64 game, completely collapsed early Tuesday morning. This breaking news comes just a few weeks after the announcement that the invaluable astronomy tool would be demolished due to fears that it would completely collapse.

Almost seems like a metaphor for the decline of America.

Why didn't they try to repair the telescope before it collapsed? Scientist in China still seem to think this is worth investing in, Why doesn't the west?

  • Dumpster_fire_pants [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Capitalism eats everything. Nasa was really a socialist idea if you think about it. OK well maybe not, spy satellites, etc. But at least we were funding research, heck the space shuttle was incredibly expensive and way fucking cool. But capitalism said yeah let us eat some of that. So we sell off the space science to Musk, and domestic research that doesn't generate capital for some schmuck gets abandoned and collapses and we're left with shitty infrastructure, no real science for the sake of science, but whoop whoop

    SpaceX