Friday, January 06, 2012

Space station for sale

Technically, it's an Earth station, not a space station since it is not, in fact, in space. But semantics aside, the Jamesburg Earth Station in central California is for sale and can be yours for the low price of $3 million. For that hefty price tag, you get a 10 story tall, 30 m diameter radio dish and associated building that was constructed to withstand a 5 megaton atomic blast (though presumably not a direct hit). They don't make 'em like they used to.

Dish photo from http://www.jamesburgdish.org/


According to wikipedia, this facility was used to downlink data from the Apolllo Moon landings. Interestingly, the initial private owners in 2002 were a group of ham radio operators who refurbished the little-used facility and used it to bounce radio signals off the Moon. I don't recall seeing any scientific output regarding this radio experiment - most work done along these lines is done using the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, who main dish is an order of magnitude (305 m!) larger.

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