Radio Telescope Has Military Uses?

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."

Comments

Re:Silly.

[MichaelSmith]

People with no honor exploding bombs in cities, beheading, hostage taking etc. I often wonder if the US military will meet the same fate as the brits

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.

The Stanford Dish: Nuclear Explosions in Space

[dexamyl]

The radio telescope in the Stanford foothills, now generally regarded as a benign feature of the landscape, pretty at sunset, and occasionally used for research, was originally commissioned to study nuclear explosions in space. I don't know very much about the history of the project, except that its true purpose was almost certainly kept secret. That was military S.O.P. for weapons research, and there had been massive protests against Stanford Research Institute, the owner of the dish, for its involvement in "evil" military research. Even today few people are uneasy about the origins of the dish, because few people know.

Ironic

[Sir Holo]

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.

That part of the movie was based on fact

[dlleigh]

The local Puerto Ricans were worried that the Arecibo radiotelescope had a military purpose, and they did indeed call it "el radar". That part of the movie "Contact" was based on real events.

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.