[ExI] The Thirty Meter Telescope is now officially dead

Adrian Tymes atymes at gmail.com
Sun Dec 22 23:15:25 UTC 2019


On Sun, Dec 22, 2019 at 2:51 AM John Clark via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Synthetic aperture is not going to help you when it comes to equalling
> the light gathering power of the thirty meter telescope,
>

I never said it would be the same.  I said I could get a 30 meter diameter
synthetic aperture telescope up for far less.

Now, if you want almost the same telescope - how much do you think it would
take to get enough robotic (possibly teleoperated) mining, refining, and
manufacturing capability on the Moon to be able to start constructing lunar
observatories?  Again, though, the money wouldn't be spent entirely or
almost entirely on Hawaii, which kills the idea of repurposing this
specific budget.


> Another problem with a space based system is that all those precise
> optical surfaces are going to have to be flying in orbits far far more
> precise than anything ever flown before, so you can't put them in low earth
> orbit due to atmospheric drag.
>

What would happen if you did put it in low Earth orbit?  Would you get a
better signal than from a hypothetical observatory that doesn't exist in
the first place?

BTW, this is "orbit" singular, the mass of satellites being docked to one
another to form one large structure.
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