I think this is a bummer, birds need exercise in order to stay useful, and when they are no longer flown, the capability to change that decision decays away very quickly for airplanes.
The relevant example here is SOPHIA's predecessor, the Kuiper observatory, which was used up until Sophia came online, then basically set aside and allowed to rot.
This image (1) shows said observatory in 2016, I'm sure it looks even worse by now.
I can only hope that one or both of those birds are put into static display on a museum so we can enjoy them for years to come.
They are unique machines that simply are not created by most private enterprise, and I believe have significant historical value even in the early few years after they are taken out of service, but before they are considered an artifact worth studying for historic value.
In the same way that a 2010 computer is not considered vintage yet (seems like IME, WinXP era is starting to be considered vintage ish), but will be considered vintage in another five or six years, airplanes seem to go through a crucible in between being taken out of active service and being preserved or restored for historic reasons.
In said crucible, the birds need to escape being scrapped or exposed to the elements to rust away from the inside, before people notice that this thing is a survivor and worth preserving.
That looks incredibly sad. You are spot on, there is a period between when stuff is used daily and when it is determined to be of historic significance where objects that would have been determined to be of historic significance are at risk of being demolished or recycled.
The inner city of Amsterdam barely escaped that fate and that's a very large object where at least some people would be directly influenced by the decision to destroy it being farsighted enough to realize that this is a terrible mistake. But for subjects such as these the destruction happens on a much smaller scale and not enough people will notice in time to avoid a disaster.
Exactly! SOPHIA is not just the bird herself. How many jobs of historical interest are going away here? (No, I don't think we should keep all jobs forever) How many seasons of a reality show could be made about the person who maintains the telescope itself? The telescope support system? Heck, even the engineering of Ye Olde 747-400 and how different it is from other 747s in terms of maintenance costs and procedures.
Yes, lots of those are just 'nerdy interests' but there are families who have built lives around supporting SOPHIA and likely at least some involved in Kuiper before her, and we're gointg to shut it all down, we should at least record what it was like before it stops, what it was like before they weld the airplane doors shut so morons don't try to parkour inside, get injured, and sue the museum etc., a necessary activity that still restricts the public from more fully understanding what this entire system (bird, observatory, support structures, experiments, results, an dmore) was like, and that's in a best case where NASA puts SOPHIA on display somewhere instead of the much more common [park her and cannibalize her parts, move her to a boneyard, scrap her] pipeline that ends most (admittedly pretty common) birds.
SOPHIA isn't a 747-400; if it was, it would probably still be flying. Instead, it's the now-extremely-rare 747SP, a 747-100 derivative designed for special long range operations:
The original 747-100 had a much shorter range than the 747-400 (due to earlier, fuel-thirsty engines and a bunch of other early design decisions). The SP was shortened and modified extensively to achieve roughly the range of the -400, albeit with fewer passengers, but was obsolescent by the early 1980s.
SOFIA was built into an aircraft that first flew in 1977: today it's a 45-year old example of a plane with a 30 year design life, and unlike the B-52 there is no deep-pocket Pentagon contract paying for long-term maintenance.
(Yes, putting her out to pasture in an aviation museum would be the ideal fate for this historic aircraft.)
Wow. When I started reading this comment I thought it was a joke. We're going to keep operating a scientific instrument just for a reality show?
Sofia, like any telescope, is a tool that we use to learn about the universe. It has a cost to keep running, and that cost needs to be weighed against alternative uses for that budget.
The primary benefit of SOFIA over ground-based telescopes is that you avoid a level of interference and distortion from our atmosphere. Space-based telescopes offer the same benefit, with the additional benefit of not subjecting the optics to turbulent air. With the advance of adaptive optics on ground-based telescopes and with private space companies competing to bring the cost of a launch down, there are probably more cost-effective solutions to the problems SOFIA was designed decades ago to solve.
You missed his point I think. We would not be keeping a scientific instrument 'just for a reality show', we would use the reality show as a way of preserving the instrument.
Correct, thanks, I will try to be more succinct and clear about my comments in the future.
We are losing afaict unique scientific capabilities with this shutdown, the least we can do is document it well so the next multi billion dollar project to regain said capabilities has clearer acceptance criteria.
SOFIA gets above most of the water vapor in the atmosphere allowing it to do IR astronomy that ground based telescopes can't.
SOFIA is accessible in a way that space telescopes aren't. This allows switching instruments, upgrading instruments, and development of new instruments that can't be done in active space telescopes.
Its development and maintenance cost to date is a bit over 1/10 the cost of Webb to date.
Plus it's really cool to cut a hole in an airplane and stick a telescope out.
And all that just to make room for another generic housing block or one more multi level parking garage.
I am certain this will be considered a big mistake in the future and might even result in an inexact 1:1 replica being build just for the tourist novelty potential.
I never used the Kuiper Airborn Observatory, but several people in my grad school group did. Nearly every flight seemed to be a fiasco. Sometimes instruments rattled apart during takeoff. One postdoc was notified (months after the flight) that the telescope had a several degree pointing error during her observations.
Thanks for sharing this story, looks like today it's my turn to forget HN is the place where if you reference something famous or notable, someone in that sphere of influence often has a chance to weigh in!
Me thinking it's cool you told this story aside, The C-141 itself has a bit of a temperamental reputation, I'm not surprised to hear even the one they tapped to play nice with their stratospheric observatory was still grumpy, though that may be my bias being part of the C-130 orbit.
It was not based on her observations, but I don't know how they actually figured out their error. I give them some credit for at least admitting the problem, rather than just letting her flail away at trying to make something out of worthless data. On the other hand, it was a pretty big disappointment for a postdoc, who of course must produce some publishable results within a pretty short time window.
> SOFIA’s publication rate is now starting to creep up, and last year it was 33 papers. The ultimate goal is 75 to 100 papers per year, says James Jackson, associate director for research at the Universities Space Research Association, the Maryland-based group that manages SOFIA. “More than 150 was a stretch goal,” he says.
I really, really hope they found a better way of assessing the telescope's value than number of papers published. "75 to 100 papers per year" feels like a bit of a Freudian slip as to what professional science sees as its ultimate goal.
It's refreshing to at least see them admit their lunacy here!
Scientific incentives are so insanely wrong that it's hard not to see everything not directly supporting an immediate application flaming out within the next 50-100 years (assuming no major course corrections).
I'd probably still be a scientist if things were better. But they're not.
Incidentally, this is why the science worship/science fetishism is so cringe-inducing for those of us who've been down at the coal face (ok, for me it was the iron face in Soudan, but whatever). The process, capital-S Science, is worthy. What we have now is not that.
I agree with your overall point, in that the number of papers published != the amount of 'science' being performed, however that sort of metric might not be such a bad way to gauge the output of a shared resource like a telescope. For the sake of argument, if the telescope time is split up between 100 different groups, each of which submitted a proposal for which the end goal is a publication, is it not that unreasonable to assume that the publication would at least be available as a pre-print say six months after the group's observation time has ended?
results might not be significant, project might not pan out for any number of reasons, projects can easily take more than 6 months. sadly, people still don't care about negative results
This is a good point, but if there are few (if any) publishable results coming out of a costly apparatus (and none are particularly notable), isn't that an indication that resources should be refocused to more productive projects? Resources are always limited.
If you think this costly and relatively unproductive apparatus should continue to receive funding, is there any circumstance which would cause you to discontinue it in favor of something else (which is not a direct replacement)?
not an astrophysicist so can't comment on the science directly. cost-benefit analysis in science funding is a really difficult problem. that being said, $85M buys quite a lot of science.
It's easy to agree that number of papers published is a poor indicator of "quality" or "quantity" of raw science generated... but we hardly have anything better. Publication record is the currency at the moment.
And for every cancelled experiment / unfunded grant - there is someone else getting that money instead. I want to believe that savings from the operations of the SOFIA will be channeled into another scientific project. I am pretty sure there is a lot of smart folks out there that will happily convert newly available budget into interesting observations.
It's truly unfortunate. Science should be about understanding how wrong we are just as much or even more than understanding how right we are. And yet, the push to publish puts things on safety rails to make sure you're always right. It's like putting blinders on science when we should be letting it run free.
Sure it costs a lot to operate compared to other missions, but look at what it costs compared to the average useless project at DoD/Pentagon. This country needs to get its priorities straight!
Meanwhile, lots of startups crash and burn raising multiples of the annual budget of SOFIA in just a single round. Says something about priorities. Even though there's low cost/benefit on SOFIA, surely, pumping $600M into a single round for a startup that ends up laying off thousands of workers has even lower cost / benefit? Imagine, instead of one round into Unicorn-Here-Today-Gone-Tomorrow, you could fund SOFIA for 7 years.
"Years of problems" looks like an outright falsehood.
It was as expensive to operate as an observatory plus a jumbo jet plus an observatory actually mounted in a jumbo jet. That is a problem, but does not mean "years of problems". It was doing good science, but cost as much as a lot of other things combined. Still: it would take many more years for the cost to approach that of just getting the James Webb infrared telescope built and launched: like, 200 years.
Maybe its high cost relative to some other projects made it seem like it was stealing money people wanted to spend on their own projects. That would be honest to say without inventing trouble.
I worked on some components of SOFIA - the "garage door" actuators - at my first job after engineering school in 2008 ish. The actuators, 1 upper and 1 lower if I recall correctly, had large Titanium gears which required lubricant. NASA was pressing for a dry-film lubricant (something like what would normally be a backup lubricant in a helicopter gearbox if the primary lubricant failed) because large gobs of the lubricant might otherwise end up in unwanted places (the telescope!) with a large hole open on the aircraft. The company I worked for was against this, but was running tests on the gears with only dry-film lubricant applied at the time. I don't remember the results of the tests, but I do remember learning how to lock-wire on those test actuators which I had to repeatedly take apart for inspection!
It looks like SOFIA and Webb are operating at similar frequencies. Could it be just a coincidence that SOFIA is being turned off just as Webb is passing its validation tests?
31 comments
[ 0.15 ms ] story [ 71.2 ms ] threadThe relevant example here is SOPHIA's predecessor, the Kuiper observatory, which was used up until Sophia came online, then basically set aside and allowed to rot.
This image (1) shows said observatory in 2016, I'm sure it looks even worse by now.
(1) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Kuiper_A...
I can only hope that one or both of those birds are put into static display on a museum so we can enjoy them for years to come.
They are unique machines that simply are not created by most private enterprise, and I believe have significant historical value even in the early few years after they are taken out of service, but before they are considered an artifact worth studying for historic value.
In the same way that a 2010 computer is not considered vintage yet (seems like IME, WinXP era is starting to be considered vintage ish), but will be considered vintage in another five or six years, airplanes seem to go through a crucible in between being taken out of active service and being preserved or restored for historic reasons.
In said crucible, the birds need to escape being scrapped or exposed to the elements to rust away from the inside, before people notice that this thing is a survivor and worth preserving.
The inner city of Amsterdam barely escaped that fate and that's a very large object where at least some people would be directly influenced by the decision to destroy it being farsighted enough to realize that this is a terrible mistake. But for subjects such as these the destruction happens on a much smaller scale and not enough people will notice in time to avoid a disaster.
Yes, lots of those are just 'nerdy interests' but there are families who have built lives around supporting SOPHIA and likely at least some involved in Kuiper before her, and we're gointg to shut it all down, we should at least record what it was like before it stops, what it was like before they weld the airplane doors shut so morons don't try to parkour inside, get injured, and sue the museum etc., a necessary activity that still restricts the public from more fully understanding what this entire system (bird, observatory, support structures, experiments, results, an dmore) was like, and that's in a best case where NASA puts SOPHIA on display somewhere instead of the much more common [park her and cannibalize her parts, move her to a boneyard, scrap her] pipeline that ends most (admittedly pretty common) birds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747SP
The original 747-100 had a much shorter range than the 747-400 (due to earlier, fuel-thirsty engines and a bunch of other early design decisions). The SP was shortened and modified extensively to achieve roughly the range of the -400, albeit with fewer passengers, but was obsolescent by the early 1980s.
SOFIA was built into an aircraft that first flew in 1977: today it's a 45-year old example of a plane with a 30 year design life, and unlike the B-52 there is no deep-pocket Pentagon contract paying for long-term maintenance.
(Yes, putting her out to pasture in an aviation museum would be the ideal fate for this historic aircraft.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratospheric_Observatory_for_...
That's what I get for reading what feels like 80 aircraft articles in a 2-hour wiki walk, I'm bound to get some details mixed up!
Sofia, like any telescope, is a tool that we use to learn about the universe. It has a cost to keep running, and that cost needs to be weighed against alternative uses for that budget.
The primary benefit of SOFIA over ground-based telescopes is that you avoid a level of interference and distortion from our atmosphere. Space-based telescopes offer the same benefit, with the additional benefit of not subjecting the optics to turbulent air. With the advance of adaptive optics on ground-based telescopes and with private space companies competing to bring the cost of a launch down, there are probably more cost-effective solutions to the problems SOFIA was designed decades ago to solve.
We are losing afaict unique scientific capabilities with this shutdown, the least we can do is document it well so the next multi billion dollar project to regain said capabilities has clearer acceptance criteria.
SOFIA is accessible in a way that space telescopes aren't. This allows switching instruments, upgrading instruments, and development of new instruments that can't be done in active space telescopes.
Its development and maintenance cost to date is a bit over 1/10 the cost of Webb to date.
Plus it's really cool to cut a hole in an airplane and stick a telescope out.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakagin_Capsule_Tower#Demoli...
And all that just to make room for another generic housing block or one more multi level parking garage.
I am certain this will be considered a big mistake in the future and might even result in an inexact 1:1 replica being build just for the tourist novelty potential.
Me thinking it's cool you told this story aside, The C-141 itself has a bit of a temperamental reputation, I'm not surprised to hear even the one they tapped to play nice with their stratospheric observatory was still grumpy, though that may be my bias being part of the C-130 orbit.
are they saying they discovered the issue based on her observations, or that something she did gave the scope this error?
> SOFIA’s publication rate is now starting to creep up, and last year it was 33 papers. The ultimate goal is 75 to 100 papers per year, says James Jackson, associate director for research at the Universities Space Research Association, the Maryland-based group that manages SOFIA. “More than 150 was a stretch goal,” he says.
I really, really hope they found a better way of assessing the telescope's value than number of papers published. "75 to 100 papers per year" feels like a bit of a Freudian slip as to what professional science sees as its ultimate goal.
Scientific incentives are so insanely wrong that it's hard not to see everything not directly supporting an immediate application flaming out within the next 50-100 years (assuming no major course corrections).
I'd probably still be a scientist if things were better. But they're not.
Incidentally, this is why the science worship/science fetishism is so cringe-inducing for those of us who've been down at the coal face (ok, for me it was the iron face in Soudan, but whatever). The process, capital-S Science, is worthy. What we have now is not that.
If you think this costly and relatively unproductive apparatus should continue to receive funding, is there any circumstance which would cause you to discontinue it in favor of something else (which is not a direct replacement)?
And for every cancelled experiment / unfunded grant - there is someone else getting that money instead. I want to believe that savings from the operations of the SOFIA will be channeled into another scientific project. I am pretty sure there is a lot of smart folks out there that will happily convert newly available budget into interesting observations.
It was as expensive to operate as an observatory plus a jumbo jet plus an observatory actually mounted in a jumbo jet. That is a problem, but does not mean "years of problems". It was doing good science, but cost as much as a lot of other things combined. Still: it would take many more years for the cost to approach that of just getting the James Webb infrared telescope built and launched: like, 200 years.
Maybe its high cost relative to some other projects made it seem like it was stealing money people wanted to spend on their own projects. That would be honest to say without inventing trouble.