Arecibo Observatory Facing Massive Budget Cuts

SirLurksAlot writes "Many supporters of the SETI@home project have recently received a message informing them of impending budget cuts for the Arecibo Observatory and asking them to show their support for the project by writing to Congress. The letter also informs supporters that there are currently two bills (Senate bill 2862 sponsored by Senator Hillary Clinton, and a similar House bill, H.R. 3737), which are intended to secure funding for the project. According to The Planetary Society, the current plan for the Arecibo Observatory involves cutting funding by more than 60% from $10.4 million to just $4 million by 2011."

Comments

Perspective

[nicklott]

To put this into perspective, $6m is about the cost of the seat in a single F-22.

Re:What?

[Scott Ransom]

As an honest question, what useful things has Aricebo produced?

How about a Nobel prize? (Amongst a bunch of other excellent bits of radio astronomy, aeronomy, and planetary science).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSR_B1913+16

Or better yet, don't write Congress

[Einer2]

The ground-based astronomical budget is finite, and the only way we're going to finance 50 shiny new programs is by shutting down the old ones that aren't scientifically competitive. Arecibo hasn't been scientifically competitive in a decade, and it won't ever be competitive in the era when we want to build LSST, PANSTARRS, TMT, ATA, ATST, and a dozen other acronyms.

We've already had one near-miss, when Hillary Clinton tried to force some budget language funding Arecibo in the weeks before the Puerto Rico primary. She didn't earmark new funding, she just added a mandate that existing funding go there. Oddly enough, the legislation didn't mention which other ground-based program would be cut to free up the funds...

Profitability of the war in Iraq

[tjstork]

Meanwhile, the Iraq War has cost the average taxpayer about $12,000 each over the last five years.

If we assume a baseline 100M taxpayers, and an Iraq war cost of 100B a year, then, we're really talking only about $1000 a year on average. Notice, though, that 90% of the taxes in the USA are paid by people making over $250,000 a year, so really, we average stiffs are probably not even paying for the war at all.

Now, let's say that the Iraqis come through and increase their oil production to first 3m bbls/day, and then to 5m / bbls a day, and the benefits of this production increase result in additional 50 billion a year in profits to American companies, PLUS, a reduction in gasoline costs. We can calculate the ultimate profitability of the war based upon a reduction in the price of gasoline per person, knowing that in the USA the per capita consumption of gasoline is about 10 barrels per person per year. Source , and thus, about 30 barrels per taxpayer per year. So we say at 30 x 45 gets us about 1200 gallons of gas per year per taxpayer. We can thus calculate that if the war in Iraq is victorious, AND, nets a global price reduction of about a $1 / gallon, then, each taxpayer would come out ahead about $200 per year, even if the cost of continuing the war is born indefinitely. If, on the other hand, the USA wins the war and a stable semi-US-friendly government emerges and thus we can withdraw the troops, and Iraq still pumps enough to lower the price of gasoline by a $1 a gallon, then the war would basically pay for itself in about 5 years, and then after that, it would be pure profit for the USA. Hey, imperialism can be profitable, which is why countries do it!