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Listening for ET, in a big way
LeeMichael McLean -- Design News, July 10, 2001
Wednesday, August 30, 2000
Green Bank, WV—What's larger than a football field, weighs 16 million pounds, and is fully steerable? It's not an Airbus…
The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, the largest, fully steerable radio telescope in the world, was dedicated after 10 years of design and construction. It isn't the biggest telescope in the world, but it is adjustable with an accuracy of one arcsecond, the width of a human hair seen six feet away—and that can make all the difference in the world when trying to target interstellar dust and gas.
Achieving the accuracy required for this application was particularly challenging due to the asymmetrical design of the telescope.
"In many cases, when engineers talk about accuracy, what they really want is repeatability," said Rick Christyson, chief engineer at Nook Industries and head of the project manu-facturing the linear motion equipment used on the telescope. "In the case of positions, it's so important to know not only what combination of mechanical actions will orient the device exactly as desired, but also that once that combination is identified, it can always be repeated."
To read a Design News' article on the engineering that went into moving this massive struc-ture, click here.
