12/21/2020

The Lack of Government Funding is Causing Science Infrastructure to Collapse

The U.S. must restore support for scientific studies

Earlier this month, an iconic science installation in Puerto Rico failed quite spectacularly (and a different view from a drone at the exact moment from above). This final collapse came after an initial cable snapped earlier this summer. The National Science Foundation’s Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapsed on Dec. 1, after elements of the support structure had broken in August.

Not long after the initial damage, the NSF determined that it would decommission the radio telescope. Rather than waiting for humans to take care of business, physical forces, notably gravity, pushed the decommissioning project forward. What we witnessed isn’t simply the collapse of a single installation. Much as every story about sinkholes or video of collapsing bridges, the wreckage is emblematic of a much larger lack of financial support for our infrastructure. The primary cause of the failure of this research facility is the federal government’s tight-fisted approach to funding scientific infrastructure.

The installation was built in the 1960s at a projected cost of $9.3 million, equivalent to about $79.1 million today. In February 2018, the National Science Foundation — which has provided most of the observatory’s funding — announced that it would cut its annual contribution from $8 million to $2 million by FY2023. This was timed with a 26% reduction in the NSF budget for Major Research Equipment and Facilities in the two year period from FY2016 to FY2018.  Of course, there are reasons why NSF might not want to continue to fund the operation of a 50-year old facility, but talk of decommissioning Arecibo apparently hadn’t been in the works prior to the most recent damage. In fact, investments in the facility had been underway for a number of years. The facility was damaged when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico last year, but reopened quickly after the storm because of a $16.3 million repair investment. Following on that in 2018, a team of scientists received a $5.8 million grant to design and mount a supersensitive antenna at Arecibo, which was planned to be operational by 2022.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Scholarly Kitchen.