Rumble in the Airwaves

fizban writes: "We've talked a lot on Slashdot about active uses of the radio spectrum for things like wireless networking and global communications (Iridium). But what about the passive users who are more and more often finding themselves trampled upon by the corporations and military who grab up more and more of the unused spectrums for their own uses? Check out this New York Times article for a little insight into the challenges being faced by today's and tomorrow's radio astronomers."

Far Side of the Moon

[The Iconoclast]

One of these days, we are going to have to have a radio observatory (and a visual observatory while we're at it) on the far side of the moon. Since the far side of the moon is always facing away from the earth, you've got thousands of kilometers of rock between the recievers and earthly interfereance. A visual observatory there would also be nice. There would be no atmosphere to distort the images and you could build a lot bigger telescope than Hubble.

Re:Far Side of the Moon

[taliver]

The other benefit of having a base on the far side of the moon as compared to free fall is that dust will eventually settle, as opposed to free fall where it drifts in the orbit for very long periods of time.

The big downside is the enormous distance from here to the moon as compared to where the hubble telescope is. 384000 kilometers as compared to 590 km to the HST. Just a bit more of a haul to get there.

Also, there's the big issue of landing things on the moon, as opposed to throwing them into orbit... you can always realign an orbit missed by a few meters...

No Reg link

[MasterOfDisaster]

For those of us like me who hate registering for anything but slashdot, here's the manditory no-reg link [nytimes.com]

Off Earth

[Siusan]

Off earth reception and astronomic study is the only long term solution, whether your talking about light or radio interference.