07-16-2015, 07:10 PM
HOTPE wrote, quite reasonably:
"If there was a business opportunity available where you could make $1 per second, don't you think there would be privately funded telescopes being built to rake in the profits?"
On average, optical/IR telescopes observe about 10 hours per night annually on Mauna Kea. For the Kecks, one dollar per second equates to about $36,000 a night for each telescope, or about $70,000 total, per night. If you multiply that by roughly 300 (several nights can't be used due to engineering work), that's a little over $20 million a year for pure operational costs alone. Add in instrumentation and telescope development, you're now adding on about five to ten million bucks (a typical advanced near-infrared instrument generally costs about ten to fifteen million dollars to build, although it'sspread over a small number of years).
So let's just say it's $25 million annually. That's about correct by the way.
Can't help thinking that the "rent observatories charge" some continue to "report" ends up being so close to the actual operational costs that the conspiracy theory they are trying to construct is likely to get nowhere.
As for the stuff Newgirl posted about Yale, no Yale did not pay $12 million for 15 nights on the Kecks. Even the article you quote doesn't say that. Yale became a scientific partner for the Kecks and contributed $12 million for roughly 150 nights over ten years. That's roughly a half a year of observing time. Oh look, half a year of Keck time costs roughly $12 million in operational and instrument costs. Just what you would expect. See above.
"If there was a business opportunity available where you could make $1 per second, don't you think there would be privately funded telescopes being built to rake in the profits?"
On average, optical/IR telescopes observe about 10 hours per night annually on Mauna Kea. For the Kecks, one dollar per second equates to about $36,000 a night for each telescope, or about $70,000 total, per night. If you multiply that by roughly 300 (several nights can't be used due to engineering work), that's a little over $20 million a year for pure operational costs alone. Add in instrumentation and telescope development, you're now adding on about five to ten million bucks (a typical advanced near-infrared instrument generally costs about ten to fifteen million dollars to build, although it'sspread over a small number of years).
So let's just say it's $25 million annually. That's about correct by the way.
Can't help thinking that the "rent observatories charge" some continue to "report" ends up being so close to the actual operational costs that the conspiracy theory they are trying to construct is likely to get nowhere.
As for the stuff Newgirl posted about Yale, no Yale did not pay $12 million for 15 nights on the Kecks. Even the article you quote doesn't say that. Yale became a scientific partner for the Kecks and contributed $12 million for roughly 150 nights over ten years. That's roughly a half a year of observing time. Oh look, half a year of Keck time costs roughly $12 million in operational and instrument costs. Just what you would expect. See above.