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<blockquote data-quote="freyar" data-source="post: 6821600" data-attributes="member: 40227">Well, very few people expected the original LIGO to see anything.&nbsp; It was generally considered as a proof of technology that might get lucky.&nbsp; It's only now with advanced LIGO that the community would have been surprised not to see something (though this was quite soon).LIGO is scheduled to undergo some small improvements (not large scale) that will nonetheless improve the performance a lot.&nbsp; Another observatory will open in Italy within I think the next year.&nbsp; Japan and India are also building observatories.&nbsp; My understanding is that these costs are basically already budgeted, so I don't know if you'd count that as new money or not.&nbsp; There are hopes to build a space-based gravitational wave telescope, but it's uncertain that will happen -- it's currently a European project slated to launch in the 2030s, and the one cost estimate I saw is between 1 and 2 billion euros.However, there is new technology developed for these observatories, which seems likely (as supported by history) to pay back the investment in the future.&nbsp; And a lot of the cost goes to pay for graduate students (about $100,000-200,000 per student), but each of those new PhDs has been estimated to be worth an extra $2-3 million to the economy over their lifetime.&nbsp; And all that is completely neglecting the fact that looking into nature is what humans do.&nbsp; That I don't know for sure, but I don't think so.&nbsp; The big challenge is making the system extremely stable.&nbsp; Some of that is making sure the laser system is stable, which may in fact be determined by the lasing material. That also affects the frequency.&nbsp; Anyway, there may be other reasons for choosing a particular laser frequency, but that's well beyond my area of expertise.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="freyar, post: 6821600, member: 40227"] Well, very few people expected the original LIGO to see anything. It was generally considered as a proof of technology that might get lucky. It's only now with advanced LIGO that the community would have been surprised not to see something (though this was quite soon). LIGO is scheduled to undergo some small improvements (not large scale) that will nonetheless improve the performance a lot. Another observatory will open in Italy within I think the next year. Japan and India are also building observatories. My understanding is that these costs are basically already budgeted, so I don't know if you'd count that as new money or not. There are hopes to build a space-based gravitational wave telescope, but it's uncertain that will happen -- it's currently a European project slated to launch in the 2030s, and the one cost estimate I saw is between 1 and 2 billion euros. However, there is new technology developed for these observatories, which seems likely (as supported by history) to pay back the investment in the future. And a lot of the cost goes to pay for graduate students (about $100,000-200,000 per student), but each of those new PhDs has been estimated to be worth an extra $2-3 million to the economy over their lifetime. And all that is completely neglecting the fact that looking into nature is what humans do. That I don't know for sure, but I don't think so. The big challenge is making the system extremely stable. Some of that is making sure the laser system is stable, which may in fact be determined by the lasing material. That also affects the frequency. Anyway, there may be other reasons for choosing a particular laser frequency, but that's well beyond my area of expertise. [/QUOTE]

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