Quote:
Originally Posted by ptlyon
WTH happened to it?
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The initial issue was that a giant (like 4" diameter) cable pulled loose, and in the fall it took out a big chunk of the dish below. More recently, the increased loads took out another cable, and the troubling part is that that cable gave out well under its expected loads.
So now they're nervous about all of the other cables, and they're afraid that, if another one goes, the loads on the rest will be too much and the entire thing will fail catastrophically. And when you're nervous about a giant piece of equipment failing catastrophically, you don't put workers in areas where such a failure would almost certainly be fatal.
So here we are. I'm sure that, with enough money, they could fix it. But it's been underfunded for years now, and it sounds like it's just too risky to try and fix it.