Awwh hell yes...
One of my favourite places as a kid, I was really upset to see it had closed its doors to visitors a few years ago, can't wait to take my kids there now....
Jodrell Bank, home to the Lovell radio telescope, is getting £3.1m in funding to build a new visitor centre, cafe and maze. The centre has also just been granted planning permission so building could start as early as next month. There will be a new Planet Pavilion entrance building, a glass-walled cafe (pictured), a Space …
I loved jodrell bank. I used to badger my mum to take me there every summer. The highlights were:
1. swarming over the decomissioned control panel
2. playing with the gyroscopic precession holding-a-bike-wheel-on-a-chair thing
3. shouting across the park with the big-ears parabolas
4. the planetarium with its voting buttons
5. boggling at the laser holograms
6. playing with the broken steerable dish
Many good memories - I can trace nerdishness back to that place, and to the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. Top stuff :)
I thought that photo was some El-Reg comedy knock up, a laff, until I read the blurb!
Just who the hell is going to want to drink their cappucino with a bloody great ugly lump of iron girders imposing over them!?
Sure it is of important astronomical distinction, but I wouldn't want to spend any time looking at the rusting monstrosity.
Sigh.. for all the commenters who think it's a bad idea....
Take your snobbish blinkers off once in a while and see the bigger picture.
Of course most of the people who will visit need it dumbed down because they won't have clue one about the research or the vast majority of the work done at Jodrell but that's not the point of the visitor centre.
It's not there to make everyone an astrophysicist, it's there to make the case for the future existence of Jodrell and inspire future generations of engineers, physicists, astrophysicists and geeks.
If children aren't shown things like this in terms they can understand and enjoy or be inspired to learn more then we are truly doomed to a country full of tourism and media studies graduates and short sighted idiots who can't see how making science popular is anything but dumbing down.
Of course science needs more money, what doesn't, but the only way to get it is to make it accessible and put it in the forefront of people's minds. If the public can't see (or think they can see) what goes on at places like Jodrell then they won't support it or be happy to fund it.
Rant over.
A marvellous thing - so what that it can now be done with a field array of dull aerials and a big computer that's so not the point. Jodrell Bank is proper Quatermass/War of the Worlds engineering and still working daily. I can see it moving around as I type.
As a bonus my dad got better lectures at manchester uni from postdocs filling in because the prof was off at lower withington / goostrey building and playing with the dish.
Ambivalent about the upgrade - the arboretum has always been nice but not exactly a hit with most kids. The visitor center and planetarium/film show have definitely seen better days. The cafe is straight out of minor UK attraction central casting.
If they are going to spend on visitor attraction stuff - I hope they secure the basics and don't fall for anything flashy but quickly dating. More of the sturdy basic hands on physics stuff which has thinned out in recent times would be good. Pushing buttons on little computers to watch small videos is something kids get to do at home. Pick out some popular styles from Manchester museum of science and industry and the Science Museum.
Wishing them well
There was all sorts of cool stuff there when I went as a kid. Went last year with the missus and was VERY disappointed - just a couple of video screens, a bunch of printed stuff for you to read and a shop with low nerdy content (JB branded pencils and the like). But on the upside there was a woman there doing surveys of attendee (singular intended - it would be an exaggeration to use the plural, even though there were technically two of us there) so let's hope the next installment of Jodrell Bank Visitors Centre becomes worthwhile again. Maze probably not a bad idea for catering for the non-nerdy family members so the others can nerd-out for the day.
Hardly surprising the funding for JB is non-existent if most peoples' memories of it are "went there, it was crap".
I went to jodrell bank last year but couldn't really find any kind of entrance after walking through a bunch of fields for about half an hour. I eventually climbed a three foot high fence and managed to get in, but I didn't really realize it wasn't visitor friendly. I even tried a door, which was locked, and had a dozen scientists look at me through the window. It was pretty embarassing.
It's quite nice though.
That brings a tear to my eye... When I was a tiny tot we went there and that piece of punched tape was the most amazing thing I had ever got from any trip, anywhere.
I now live just a few miles from Jodrell - haven't been for years, but smile every time I see the dishes while driving past. We'll certainly make a point of going when the new stuff is open.
Still can't beat those good old 50's British sci-fi novels from the Hoyles, either.