It makes me sick in my heart to see that. To me, the telescope wasn't just about its own accomplishments--it was also a noble symbol of the quest for knowledge.
A case of RUD, I believe. At the back of my mind I kind of assumed the observatory would always be there as no reasonable halt to operations was, conceivably, on the horizon. I'm quite sure my first knowledge of the Arecibo dish was from a favorite youth science text, Nigel Henbest's, The Exploding Universe.
There must have been plans for decommissioning the hardware at some point, unless of course, it was always going to be maintained since it occupied a foremost place in the research aspirations of many teams wanting to time-slice the valuable resource it represented. All assumptions on my part. That includes the notion of continued and uninterrupted usage, barring such a thing as the science fiction scenario of a disruptive global pandemic caused by a novel virus. Perish the thought.
It makes me sick in my heart to see that. To me, the telescope wasn't just about its own accomplishments--it was also a noble symbol of the quest for knowledge.
For an inanimate non feeling object that was horrific to watch.
