Stanford Demolishes Dishes
No... no... not the big dish you can see from Highway 280...They've just put the wrecking ball to the smaller set of downhill dishes at what was once the Bracewell Observatory. Andy Kessler has a great overview of why these smaller dishes are (er... were) important at theBracewell AO entry at Always On. And he's got some photos up on Flickr. Basically the idea here is that right before the space race spooled up, a particularly clever fellow named Ronald Bracewell developed a bit of an interest in mapping the Sun. Understanding solar dynamics was (and remains) more than a simple idle curiosity; developing models to explain what's going on with the Sun has direct application to satellites, radio telecommunications, interplanetary probes and manned space missions. So his curiosity came at just the right time to assist the burgeoning US space exploration community answer critical questions like "Will the sun produce a violent outburst today frying the crew of the latest space mission?"
He went on to research a number of other topics, and his bio at the wikipedia is pretty inspiring... I encourage you to take a quick look. But I'm really trying to focus on the dishes for the moment.
The observatory built for his solar studies program eventually came to be known as the "Bracewell Astronomical Observatory" the the general and scientific public (though Stanford University refers to it as Site 515.) You can see the five remaining dishes on Google Maps with the Satellite Image option turned on. As it turns out, these are the successors to the radio-telescopes used to measure the sun; these dishes were constructed to peer a bit further out in the cosmos.
And these are the dishes that Stanford apparently started to knock down. The brouhaha over the dishes started a couple years actually when the Stanford fire marshall got a look at the neglected site and recommended demolition. But more than a few people pointed out the historical significance of the site and a brief reprieve was granted. (More info on this is available at the Stanford press release from a few years back at: Demolition delayed for decaying radio antenna farm with glorious past.)
Over the past several couple of years a group of dedicated amateur radio-astronomers and history buffs have been calling for the site's renovation. (There's even a reference to the issue at BoingBoing at the BoingBoing March 2006 Archive.) On August 4th, there was to be a hearing on the historic value of the site, and the aforementioned group of amateur radio-astronomers were hoping to be able to work out some deal for the amateur astronomy community to use the site.
But no dice.
Time ran out for the dishes, and Stanford was there waiting with a wrecking ball. Many people have expressed bewilderment concerning the university's eagerness to demolish the site. My personal suspicions are they simply want to turn the site into something that generates a little more income for the university. Such is progress.
On the dish discussing the dish's demolition, Dr. David Fields reminded us of a particularly apt haiku from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon:
Antenna searches
Retriever's nose in the wind
Ether's far secrets.
If there's any good news coming out of the whole situation it's that General Dynamics in Mountain View has indicated they might be willing to make a 45' dish they're about to decommission available to the amateur astronomy community. (More info on Bob Lash's Stanford Dishes Rescue Page.)
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