The telescope at Arecibo was built in a natural karst sinkhole which provided natural support for the telescope. The observatory contributes $29.76 million to the local economy each year. Green Bank got a new telescope and has continued to do important work in astronomy and physics. In spite of great controversy and after giving up on adding the funding to the National Science Foundation’s budget, Byrd described the collapse of the telescope as a “calamity” and fitted the funding into the emergency appropriations bill. Time-lapse: Construction of the Robert C. His influence was enormous, and he was known for directing billions of dollars toward projects that helped West Virginia. He was about to become the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and ended up the longest-serving Member of Congress. The National Science Foundation had no intention of rebuilding the telescope, but Senator Byrd wrote $75,000,000 for the rebuilding into the 1989 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill.īyrd was the Senate Majority Leader at the time. “Politically, they don’t have that much clout, and so it makes it difficult,” he told. His colleague Paul Vanden Bout reflected on the position of Puerto Rico after the collapse of the Arecibo Telescope began. “We had two well-placed, powerful senators who sensed the loss to the state and I think to the nation.” “We were lucky,” Seielstad said in the interview. Yet the cost of replacing the telescope was far beyond the state’s budget. West Virginia had a 22% poverty rate, compared with a national poverty rate of 14%, and needed every revenue stream it could command. West Virginia was one of the poorest states at the time, and infusions of cash from outside the state like those brought in by the telescope were very important. Like Arecibo, Green Bank got a boost from tourism and from the activity at the observatory. Just as Arecibo’s economy centers around the observatory, Green Bank depended on its telescope. They saw the scientific importance of the telescope. In 1988, the senators representing West Virginia were Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Like every state, West Virginia has two representatives in the U.S. There actually was hope for the Green Bank Telescope, in the form of two senators. The global scientific community and the community in Arecibo feel that way now. George Seielstad, the director of GBT at that time, told, “There was no hope.” Both were unusable and incapable of being repaired. The GBT collapsed unexpectedly in November, 1988. Just days after the 32nd anniversary of that collapse, the telescope at Arecibo went down. Both telescopes have had important educational roles, providing opportunities and inspiration for thousands of students and young scientists. Both telescopes have been used in history-making research on pulsars and for listening for possible signals from extraterrestrial sources. GBT is the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope. Until recently, Arecibo had the world’s largest radio telescope. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in Green Bank, West Virginia, has a lot in common with the telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
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