It wasn't nonmilitary, it's military use has just come to an end.

In a small sidenote of an absolutely magnificent lecture by Steve Blank, the Secret History of Silicon Valley [0], he notes that the reason the radio telescopes were built in the 60's was because the Soviets were using air defense radars in their interiors that were hard to get information on using other methods that were available, but a few times a month a very sensitive radio telescope would get a very good view of their emissions as they bounced off the moon.

This was the cause of the massive radio astronomy boom during the 60's that built all the western radio telescope megaprojects that have produced so much great scientific data.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo (radio telescope talk at 50m30s or so)

Well that is fascinating. I am reading The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.

Part of the plot is that a radio astronomer at Arecibo discovers intermittent Alien radio signals originating from the Alpha Centari System. The protagonists can't figure out why the Alpha Centari's are transmitting such strong radio signals and why they are intermittent. It turns out that their planet doesn't have an ionosphere to reflect broadcast radio waves, so the inhabitants instead bounce radio off the moon to broadcast it back to the surface.

Arecibo only picked up the radio signals when they bounced off the moon at the right angle.

The origin of radio telescopes in the 60s must be the kernel for that bit of plot.

The Sparrow is an excellent but distributing book.

Personally i couldn't stand it, because it felt like telling a straightforward story out of order was a trick to make that story seem more interesting than it really was. But i encourage everyone to read it and form their own opinion!

Basically everything that has to do with space is tied into the military. I'm sure the Chinese aren't going to the moon just for science.

Same reason the Americans and the Soviets did: national pride.

I'd say it's more "feelings of national inadequacy"

This was a super cool talk, thanks for sharing.

Great video, thanks for sharing!

> After all, why spend money on a telescope when the government can cut the budget to lower taxes a little bit more?

The NSF budget had been steadily growing in real terms, and is now over 3 times larger than in early 80s (8 times in nominal terms). If Arecibo has not been getting enough money to maintain it, and if there is no plan for new telescope in its budget, it’s not because of “budget cuts”, but rather because of spending decisions.

I do believe that we are getting less than we used to for the spend, but it’s clear that it’s not budget cuts that are responsible: rather, it’s the productivity of science is falling, and so is efficiency of the government, despite growing expenditures.

Is it productivity, or is the work to mine new "knowledge coins" just harder now that we've done some of the easier work?

By falling productivity, I simply mean that the same amount of funding results in fewer, less valuable and less useful results. Whether it’s caused by research itself becoming progressively more difficult, or some kind of fundamental dysfunction within science, I cannot accurately determine: I think it’s both at least to some degree. I think it’s reasonable to expect that keeping pace of results requires growth in spending, in general.

That is an excellent question that also strikes to the heart of how we measure "productivity."

The government does not cut the budget. It is ever-growing.

Republicans lower taxes sometimes.

They re-allocate budget from one thing to another.

They don't cut the budget.

It's almost as if this is correlated with the population increase. Almost.

Except growth of the budget outstrips growth of the population, enormously.

Please cut out the sarcasm. Let's be nice to one another. (And if you didn't mean it to be sarcasm, never mind.)

It seems like we should be able to build these things in space.

We can. They would be vastly more expensive than the telescopes we're building on earth, and uneconomical to fix or upgrade.

One day we'll have synthetic aperture radiotelescope swarms in space. For now, it's a better use of money to improve our earth-based systems first.

Makes me sad.