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China Built the World's Largest Telescope, But Has No One To Run It (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: China has built a staggeringly large instrument in the remote southern, mountainous region of the country called the Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST. The telescope measures nearly twice as large as the closest comparable facility in the world, the US-operated Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. According to the South China Morning Post, the country is looking for a foreigner to run the observatory because no Chinese astronomer has the experience of running a facility of such size and complexity. The Chinese Academy of Sciences began advertising the position in western journals and job postings in May, but so far there have been no qualified applicants. One reason is that the requirements are fairly strict: The candidate must have at least 20 years of previous experience in the field, and he or she must have taken a leading role in large-scale radio telescope project with extensive managerial experience. The candidate must also hold a professorship, or equally senior position, in a world-class research institute or university. Nick Suntzeff, an astronomer at Texas A&M University who helped lead the discovery of dark energy and is involved with construction of the optical Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile, said there are probably about 40 or so astronomers in the world who would qualify for such a job. Compared to other astronomy disciplines, radio astronomy is a relatively small field. "I am sure they will find someone," he said. "But most astronomers in the United States do not like to work abroad. It was hard to get people to apply to work in La Serena, something I could never understand, considering how beautiful it is and how nice the Chilean people are." Among the western community of astronomers there are also questions about the scientific purpose of the FAST telescope. As part of a recent National Science Foundation review of its facilities, US officials placed the similar Arecibo radio telescope near the bottom of its priorities list.
Astronomers love to work abroad. See the recent observation campaign for the MU69 flyby which took them to the backcountry of Argentina and South Africa if you need any evidence that they're willing to go out to the middle of nowhere.
The problem is living somewhere remote or hazardous. Nobody but hermits and crazy people want to live near the observatories in South America. China is one of the biggest "political risk" places on Earth.
I believe the issue with the large amount of experience is understanding all the tasks that need to get down from a maintenance perspective.
For comparison, how comfortable would you feel flying on a new plane and the person whom you hired to maintain it is a auto-mechanic. Where to look and what to look for before things become a problem comes only with experience. If the Chinese built something this big, I believe that they don't want to hire some guy to learn on the job, and fix stuff after it gets screwed up.
They should have been apprenticing someone to learn how to take on this task while they were still constructing it, but apprenticeships seem like a dirty word in today's world.
Did it somehow come as a surprise to them that they built this telescope? Wouldn't you think it would have occurred to someone along the way that at some point they needed to turn it on and operate it, and plan accordingly? In fact, the obvious place to look would be the scientists and engineers who developed the design and specified the requirements for the thing in the first place.
Something doesn't smell quite right about this story - either it's wrong/misleading, or it's a ChiCom vanity project that was unplanned from science perspective.
"Build it and they will come" might be an OK premise for a movie but it makes *no* sense for a multi-billion-yuan science project. I have to believe there is something else to this story than is being described, because it's too crazy/irresponsible to be what it seems.
Among the western community of astronomers there are also questions about the scientific purpose of the FAST telescope.
I recall reading something about giant skyscrapers and economic bubbles. The construction of the world's tallest building is usually followed by an economic bubble bursting.
The argument I believe was, very tall skyscrapers are actually not economically efficient, because more and more internal space needs to be taken up with elevators. Also at some point the added cost of building higher and higher becomes greater than the cost of simply buying another lot and making another building there. Therefore whenever you see a new #1 tallest building in the world going up, that's a sign of economic excess and status-seeking ego, rather than an efficient allocation of capital.
Anyways it makes me wonder if this #1 gigantic radio telescope (which western scientists say is not even that useful) is another sign of China's economic bubble about to burst.