DRONE FOOTAGE OF THE ARECIBO TELESCOPE COLLAPSE

On Dec. 1st, the 900 ton equipment pod that was suspended above the 1,000 wide reflecting dish of Arecibo, Puerto Rico's iconic radio telescope crashed into the dish below after the final failure of the cables that suspended it above the dish. V.T., M.G., and G.P. all sent articles about the collapse, but I found this video of the actual collapse that was captured by drones:

Drone footage shows the shocking collapse of the Arecibo Observatory

As the accompanying article makes clear, engineers feared that the equipment pod bight come crashing down - as vividly shown in the drone video - after the "failure" of some of the supporting suspension cables earlier this year:

The collapse of Arecibo didn’t come as a surprise. Following the failure of two support cables in both August and November, engineers had concluded that there was no safe way to repair Arecibo and that the platform could fall onto the dish at any moment. NSF hoped to do a controlled demolition of the telescope before that happened, but the collapse occurred before any kind of action could take place.

Readers may not realize but the suspended equipment pod - all 900 tons of it - could be moved and adjusted; since the reflecting dish itself could not be moved, the pod could be moved to various positions to receive signals reflected by the dish that came from different positions in the heavens.

What I am still perplexed about is the original cable failure itself. Shortly after the first cable failure last August, I blogged about the event here:

You'll note in that article the picture of the severed cable, which I found then, and still find, highly suspicious, for it looks as if (1) there is a single point of failure, and (2) as if the cable had been cut or severed by some means, possibly thermite, possibly some other means. My original blog, as you'll observe, also included a picture of the failure of some of the cabling strands on the infamous suspension bridge, the 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, otherwise known as Galloping Gertie (a subject of some fascination to me). Gertie's snapped cables show a tangle of spaghetti from the stresses put on them individually during the gyrations the road bed of the bridge underwent during the bridge's collapse in November of 1940 during high winds.

The Arecibo cable picture show little evidence of such stresses, but rather looks like a clean cut. This led me to speculate that the cable failure may have been sabotage. I still entertain that idea, for it seems clear to me from the picture of the failed cable that we're dealing with a cut, not the result of stress.

Subsequently to the "failure", the story was put out that the failure resulted from faulty alloying in the cables, which supposedly had recent been replaced and refurbished. Again, I find that explanation wanting, for if that were the case, one might expect to find multiple points of failure, rather than what appears to be just one.

In short: sabotage.

It's this that I find so fascinating, for in all the coverage of the demise of Arecibo, the "sabotage" hypothesis is not getting just little coverage, it's not even present. If there is any discussion of that possibility, it's being kept very very quiet and secret.

So as one might imagine, I've been doing some "high octane speculation" thinking about the matter. Almost every article that mentions Arecibo mentions its appearance in various feature films: the James Bond thriller Golden Eye, with Pierce Brosnan as James Bond and Sean Bean as "the villain" having their fight from the equipment pod suspended above the dish. In that film, Bean falls from the pod to the dish, and subsequently - perhaps suggestively - the equipment pod explodes, collapses, and falls on Bean, killing him (and the dish).  You can view the scene here:

The iconic dish also appeared in the film Contact, and also in an X-Files episode with David Duchovny visiting the facility on a tip from a US Senator that the facility had received an extra-terrestrial signal (referring to the so-called "WOW" signal, though the signal was not received at Arecibo).

Given the association of the famous radio telescope in the movies with (1) space weapons, and (2) extra-terrestrials or the search for them, I have to wonder - if the sabotage hypothesis has any merit - whether or not either or both of these fictional allusions have anything to do with the telescope's real life demise? I wonder if its destruction is because it "saw" or "heard" something it shouldn't, or if its destruction was to prevent it from seeing or hearing something someone does not want seen or heard.

In the meantime, that sabotage hypothesis remains lodged in my mind, and it's not going away any time soon.

See you on the flip side...

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Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

29 Comments

  1. Geiger on December 9, 2020 at 10:37 am

    Not to point out the obvious or anything but uh 007 = James Bond, 006= Alec Trevelyan aka JANUS… Could that mean something in relation to the Thrice Greatest Hermes Himself forget the H not you will, tis capital mhmmm, yesss a tapestry this may be)… #ArtAcrossTheAges… #FutureProvesPast… #PastProvesFuture… Almost like that Q arm of the Deep State has made a comeback… – G | well I say they eat cake, we should eat leavened bread or maybe some brioche hmm (@BTWRainbowNymzas, Help me! I feel trapped, I also slipped on a banana peel into subjectivity… like 200 years ago… I cannot get out…- N. | “Oh Well, You’re young you’ll get over it.” – Ma (in absentee) | Please do not neglect me – B | Shut it, let him fall into the land of “Double Rainbows and AngelsandAirwaves.” I run this ish – Izzy



    • Geiger on December 9, 2020 at 10:39 am

      Has anyone seen my clothes? They appear to have gone missing… 3 years ago… eh… could be worse. 😉



  2. Foglamp on December 6, 2020 at 11:19 pm

    Analysis by Scott Manley of the drone video:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59WQIRvezzI



    • SpaceWombat on December 22, 2020 at 10:02 pm

      This is a good clip, thanks.



  3. Scot Cottage on December 6, 2020 at 4:07 pm

    An ‘as designed’ life of 10 years makes it past 50. Wow either a miracle of unheard of utility or money laundering gold mine that finally expired ? Are ‘administrative’ costs what caused NASA to go private & healthcare to be government-ized ? Where is financial accountability ?
    https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/covid-exposing-cancerous-underbelly-us-healthcare



  4. marcos toledo on December 4, 2020 at 7:35 pm

    Could the Arecibo radio destruction be part of a plan to drive what’s left of the world population after the great culling. Into a neolithic lifestyle and keep at that level for as long as TPTB stays in power. But for how long can they maintain this stranglehold.



  5. goshawks on December 4, 2020 at 6:06 pm

    “NSF releases footage from the moment Arecibo’s cables failed. Two different cameras, with one capturing a close-up of the cables snapping.”
    https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/nsf-had-a-drone-watching-as-arecibos-cables-snapped/
    Plus, there are many technically-informed comments about both the facility’s origins and the exact engineering analysis of what failed, from the videos.

    An earlier article, also with lots of well-informed comments:
    https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/12/arecibo-radio-telescopes-massive-instrument-platform-has-collapsed/

    A comment from the latter by Keith Tanner:
    “I haven’t seen this anywhere else, but this 40th anniversary newsletter from the NAIC quotes the observatory’s founder as saying the original design lifetime was actually only 10 years. … If that’s the case, then we should be proud that it was kept active and viable for nearly 6 times the original intended lifetime.”

    According to that cited “40th anniversary newsletter from the NAIC”:
    adsabs . harvard . edu/full/2002ASPC..278….1A
    Arecibo was conceived/funded by a combo of ARPA and the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory to conduct “an intense study of the upper atmosphere and its effects on radio wave propagation. This effort was related to Signal Intelligence, the attempt to obtain information from intercepted radio waves.” (ARPA: Advanced Research Projects Agency, predecessor to DARPA)

    DanNeely commented: “It was originally built by ARPA for ABM research, a >60 year lifespan wasn’t a design requirement.” (ABM: Anti-Ballistic Missile)

    So, it appears Arecibo had origins with the military and design decisions were made for a short-lived facility. Subsequent to that, Arecibo was adopted and then later functionally-abandoned by the NSF.

    After reading the above, my opinion is that Arecibo was allowed to die from neglect. Whether the NSF actively ‘conspired’ to kill it by neglect in order to remove a space-surveillance asset or just passively, bureaucratically cut budgets to eventually kill it, we will probably never know…



  6. Pierre on December 4, 2020 at 2:40 pm

    Imagine rewriting Churchill’s ‘fight them on the …’ speech for today’s high tech run by low people
    It would run to 5 hours telling us where we would fight them.
    Of course ‘we will never surrender’ refers to the so called elites and ‘them’ means us.
    These days I get good (without going completely bonkers) with redefining the meaning and intent of ANY of the media (movies, news, most alt. news).
    Like Vernon Coleman’s* cynicism.. I would not trust them to be sitting there telling my (fictitious) child a bed time story… starts with “once upon a time there was a person telling a kid a bedtime story”… first lie…..
    * https://brandnewtube.com/@DrVernonColeman
    calls himself an old man sitting in a chair.



    • zendogbreath on December 4, 2020 at 5:34 pm

      I like VC and trust him about as much as I trust David Icke. At least he’s stating truths.



      • pete clark on December 8, 2020 at 11:31 am

        Seconded (or thirded). I also find Doc Vernon has that ring of certain truth about him.



  7. Richard on December 4, 2020 at 12:58 pm

    If not already seen, here’s some drone footage of the collapse of Arecibo’s cable structures as they happen from Scott Manley’s compilation and coverage as he attempts to explain more of what is seen by drone in addition to that Verge insert:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59WQIRvezzI



  8. Robert Barricklow on December 4, 2020 at 11:48 am

    Instead of the Top Secret
    “For Your Eyes Only”[1981]
    [see no evil]
    [The 12th James Bond where he’s dispatched to recover a strategic communications devise

    “For Your Ears Only”[2020]
    [hear no evil]

    Meaning, the intelligence is winnowing down to an even smaller select few; who’ve become the eyes, ears, and brains of what is information for the rest of us:
    Hear no evil; see no evil; speak no evil[masks].

    It’s all for our safety & own good.



    • zendogbreath on December 4, 2020 at 11:55 am

      Noticed an increase in a trend first noticed 11/2001. I invested back then and read Red Herring thoroughly every month. Valuable tech investor rag. After they published “Carlyle’s Way” about Carlyle’s involvement and implicit control of the terrists, my subscription was terminated and replaced with Business2.0, a MSFT worthless rag owned wholly by Gates. And Red Herring went online only for about 100 times the price. I stopped investing. I’d been carefully blinded. All worthy news sources dried up.

      Noticing now a further drying up. Any sources on cv1984 and any other pertinent topics are being censored off the big social media platforms. Their replacements are going to subscribe pay ONLY systems. That’s one of the reasons I’m here so much is that Doc has maintained both options. Curious how long he will be able to keep the “free” option open.

      FWIW, thank you Doc. More power to you. And us.



      • Robert Barricklow on December 4, 2020 at 2:45 pm

        Heard Zero Hedge bought by google.
        aka CIA
        aka Facebook
        Buying out any contrary news rag;
        or, creatively new business model.
        Then there’s the Uber model: break the laws; while buying out competetors; while being bankrupt = the 20th worst century economy.



  9. zendogbreath on December 4, 2020 at 11:47 am

    Another point brought up is that considering the movability of the platform, cannot that thing have been lowered? Has that platform not been lowered a few times? Might be a good time to see a video of its original construction. Remember seeing those videos of World Trade Center construction shortly after that terrist attack? And then those construction videos and pdf’s of the buildings’ blueprints were removed from the net and classified to prevent future terrists?



    • zendogbreath on December 4, 2020 at 11:48 am

      Come to think of it, kinda surprised this was not attributed to a terrist attack and the entire world locked down to protect us? Oh wait. Already got that covered.



  10. OrigensChild on December 4, 2020 at 10:22 am

    The official story has a mythological quality to it. Though plausible the hints of “luck” are far too high statistically to warrant an explanation unless these flights were daily and for long periods of time. Sabotage? Maybe. Demolition? Very possible, perhaps probable. Neglect? Well, that fits the demolition theory, too. I’m not suggesting ballistics here because the missing cable is a clear sign that the remaining three were experiencing more stresses than required for long term suspension. The cables separated from the housing itself suggests the fault was there–and not the cables. I’m not a materials expert not a demolition expert, so this is just a layman’s opinion.

    My ‘default’ position is ‘demolition’ by ‘neglect’. In other words this one was allowed to fail (and boosted with the ‘cutting’ of the first cable) because those who built the observatory have something better. It could have been a foreign power for the reasons cited. The thing that is nagging me is why was the cable not replaced? The reasons cited appear insufficient. Honestly, the construction of this sight appears to be “temporary”. It’s an expensive gift to Puerto Rico with a limited time period while something better could be built elsewhere–possibly an orbital platform.
    Arecibo could not be hidden. An orbital platform can be concealed from many and remain covert, which is their preferred strategy. The reason for this idea is the use of cables without a clear replacement strategy–which if one did exist, renders the whole argument in the article useless. Now that I’ve sawed the limb from the tree supporting me twig, I’ll watch my argument collapse in a cloud of rebuttals.



    • zendogbreath on December 4, 2020 at 11:45 am

      Your argument here gives more affirmation to Joseph’s idea that this was on purpose. I long wondered why there were any observatories on planet once they set up Hubble. The quality of vision from Hubble was so superior, I thought it was comparable to the automobile replacing horses. Sure there are still horses in society. Might be a tad more automotive vehicles and more reliance on them. And Hubble was a long time ago. Long enough ago that hasn’t Hubble’s useful life span been passed? How many next gen Hubbles have been posted beyond atmospheric interference since then?



      • OrigensChild on December 4, 2020 at 4:29 pm

        Not only did I have Hubble in mind, but there was already another orbital platform under development and discussion that sit farther out with multiple mirrors tethered to collect data by fine adjustments to improve resolution. Then, the story disappeared from the public sphere. For each one of these public solutions I suspect there was a second one that was constructed in secret–and deployed independently. I know the costs of one is high, but the second would be cheaper. You can bet the inferior one was the public version.



        • Robert Barricklow on December 4, 2020 at 9:05 pm

          Loved it OrigensChild!
          Your comment put me back on track.
          The lens from which to view space; the frame to analyze layer upon layer; and that is that “they” not only want to privatize Earth[then rent it out to the masses], but to privatize space.

          So the telescopes that “we” don’t know about, nor even consider?

          That’s proprietary information.



          • marcos toledo on December 5, 2020 at 2:06 am

            Meanwhile, Robert the James Webb telescope deployment gets push back when will they deploy this official replacement for the Hubble.



  11. Eddie Worthington on December 4, 2020 at 8:18 am

    Such a coincidence that a drone happened to be there right at the moment the structure failed. What are the chances???

    Helically-wound steel cables don’t fail in a brittle manner as seen in the drone footage. The only way the actual cables would fail is gradually via overstress if the cable was corroded. This type of failure would be slow (months to years) and involve significant elongation of the cable which could be seen by all as the precursor to ultimate collapse. From the drone video, there is no corrosion on the cables.

    Structurally, the weak point in the cable system is the zinc cone inside the socket (a heavy steel casting that transfers the cable force to tie rods). These are fabricated using molten zinc with a melting temperature of about 900 degrees F. It would be relatively easy to heat the sockets using some Nikola Tesla type of technology and an immediate failure would occur once the zinc hit its melting point.

    Factors of safety for steel cable systems are typically huge, on the order of 2.5 to 4, so even if one of several cable strands “failed” the others could still carry the load. From the drone footage it appears there were 4 strands originally and 1 of the 4 “failed” leaving 3 to remain from the August incident. The remaining 3 strands could easily carry the total load.

    Bottom line: your sabotage hypothesis is the only logical conclusion.



  12. Kaibosch on December 4, 2020 at 7:09 am

    Another emp precision strike? There are explosions and fires breaking out all over the place. A munitions plant in Russia exploded causing wildfires all across the region, last year a bio lab exploded owing to ‘gas cylinder’ – one of many in Russia over the last year. In the UK, there have been numerous sudden explosions of ‘gas cyliners’ , ‘chemical spills’ at /in cars, vans, malls, stores -yesterday there was a blast at a chemical water plant in Bristol which killed 4 people. Something is definitely going on… either covert hostilities or deliberate sabotage in order to further the next stage of the agenda..



    • zendogbreath on December 4, 2020 at 11:36 am

      Had not considered until last month the possibility of weapons that will generate small scale “personal” sized emp’s. Read somewhere (think it was something to do with Mark Steele’s interviews) of civilian tech devices being activated remotely and pulsed into generating small emp’s. His example was smart meters being pulsed power signals to produce pulses running through electrical systems in Paradise that turned homes into microwave ovens that vaporized all life forms inside before generating horrendous electrical fires that disintegrated all metals and left trees and plastics nearby untouched.



      • Kaibosch on December 4, 2020 at 1:54 pm

        Yeah that looks sounds like the Calif fires – the homes were destroyed but plastic waste bins completely unaffected. There is a big push to get smart meters installed in rented properties everywhere and owners/landlords are penalised for non-compliance. I’m convinced thay this is one of the ways they are going to clear the rural areas of ppl and move them into smart cities as per agenda 21.



        • Guinevere on December 5, 2020 at 11:00 am

          Who is they?????????
          Us or Them??????
          Does it matter??????
          If our solar nova explodes as expected in 10 years all will be recycled dust to dust for any survivors to turn to hieroglyphs. Orbiting space junk will return to earth over millennia and incorporated into future myths by unknown future civilizations if any survive. At least we will finally be rid of that CIA.



          • Guinevere on December 5, 2020 at 11:03 am

            We will be buried in miles of ice for thousands of years. Snow cone anyone?



  13. anakephalaiosis on December 4, 2020 at 6:25 am

    Blinding of eye, that looks to sky, creates crawling beast, prostrating in dust, licking money shoe, kissing papal toe.

    MIRACLES OF SAINT KOVYD 2

    Saint Kovyd cracks case of covid virus,
    that has taken hold of Lazarus,
    being real in his mind
    in sight blind,
    overcoming Plato cavernous.



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