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Space Science

The Billion-Dollar Telescope 326

Posted by michael from the i-spy-with-my-little-eye dept.
dcmeserve writes "As in all science, astronomers are ever searching for better technology to aid in their task. But when it comes to telescopes, nothing beats sheer bulk of light-gathering capability. This article gives a brief overview of the top contenders for the next leap forward, including a 100-meter behemoth that is expected to run $1 billion."
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The Billion-Dollar Telescope More

The Billion-Dollar Telescope

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  • Big Lens... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Unnngh! ( 731758 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:10PM (#7863021)
    For those of you who don't know how these things are measured...

    The newer models should be capable of frying at least 2.4x10^15 ants/second, compared to Hubble's 1.8x10^13 ants.

  • Meanwhile, Hubble is fighting for its life... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by klipsch_gmx ( 737375 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:11PM (#7863032)
    The lifespan of the Hubble telescope, which is almost unanimously celebrated by astronomers as an unparalleled success, has already been extended twice.

    The NASA plan calls for a Hubble servicing mission in 2006, possibly followed by another one a few years later, that could keep the Hubble in space far beyond even the launch of the new James Webb Space Telescope in 2011.

    But after the crash of the space shuttle Columbia in February, the shuttle program has come to a grinding halt. Without servicing by the space shuttle, the Hubble is living on borrowed time.

    See more here [nationalgeographic.com].

    • Re:Meanwhile, Hubble is fighting for its life... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:57PM (#7863415)
      For what it's worth, other worthwhile NASA projects are being cut in order to keep Hubble going. This is not a fiction, it is a reality today.

      It's a zero-sum game. NASA has N dollars. If M of those dollars are going to keep the old Hubble afloat far past its lifetime, M dollars worth of other projects are not going to be launched.

      Posted anonymously because I work on two projects whose budget just got slashed by 50% because more money has to be spent on Hubble. Again.

      • Re:Meanwhile, Hubble is fighting for its life... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02, 2004 @06:34PM (#7864048)
        From the policy side of this, though, it is the right decision (ACed as well, because the policy part is MY job). Money has to be spent on HST, because HST is up and functioning. If they turned off the money while the telescope was still working (and it is, and will be for the forseeable future) there would be a huge outcry... and a negative reaction from Congress.

        Which brings me to my main point. NASA is NOT a zero sum game. The Congress LIKES the HST very much. More than it likes your project, to be blunt (whatever it is, Congress likes HST better than everything else in the Office of Space Science). If NASA were to take the money away from HST, the Congress would take that money away from them, and would probably cut more from the program as well. The popularity of HST has a spill over effect into the rest of the program. It's likely that your project owes its existence to the success of HST.

        I'm sure it's frustrating to have your budget reduced continually, but attacking the successful projects at NASA is a good way to ensure those reductions in your program become permanent... Oh, and one other thing... those other projects WILL be launched. Not on schedule, perhaps, but they will be launched.
      • I look around at my various desktops and see Hubble images. The thing is that I'm not the only one. It seems that plenty of non-geeks also find the pictures aethetically pleasing. As for the science, plenty of it has come from the telescope.

        This means that those with the money (congress) like it. The administrators like it because here is a project that has made good (albeit after a bumpy start). When an administrator chooses to invest in an existing project, it is lower risk than something new.

        NASA has

  • Too much interference (Score:4, Insightful)

    by digidave ( 259925 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:13PM (#7863046)
    The bottom line with telescopes is that anything on the ground has to look through a ton of crap in the atmosphere and battle light pollution. Much smaller telescopes in space will work a lot better. ISS should have a giant telescope mounted on it. It's a shame Hubble is our only orbiting telescope.

    • Re:Too much interference (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Tyler Eaves ( 344284 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:28PM (#7863194)
      As a counterpoint, ground based 'scopes are much more flexible. It's possible to change various things as needed for expiriments. It's also MUCH more practical, as it is possible to actually do maintaince on the thing. Heck, we could probably build that 100m wonder for what a single maintaince mission to Hubble costs. In addition, there's no reason a ground based telescope can't last for 100+ years. Not gonna happen in space.

    • Re:Too much interference (Score:5, Informative)

      by FTL ( 112112 ) * <slashdot.neil@fraser@name> on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:42PM (#7863288) Homepage
      > ISS should have a giant telescope mounted on it.

      Negative.

      • ISS shakes. It's got humans inside it who won't sit still. If you want to do deep-field astronomy you want to be able to point at an object and sit there collecting light for hours or days.
      • ISS leaks air and other gasses. It is surrounded by a gas bubble. Any telescope in the area would have these gasses condensing on it's mirror.
      • ISS is in a nasty orbit. The orbit is highly inclined so that Russian vehicles can reach it (thank goodness, given the recent Shuttle grounding). But the trade off is that it is much more expensive to put stuff on ISS than to put it in a more equitoral orbit (where Hubble is).
      • ISS passes through the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly on a regular basis. This is a nasty area which causes problems for sensitive equipment. A more equitorial orbit would largely avoid this area and allow a telescope to capture faiter images before having to safe itself.
      • ISS is too low. At such low altitudes you've got a lot of atomic oxygen from the upper atmosphere. Atomic oxygen is very reactive and would ruin your mirrors quickly.
      • ISS leaks air and other gasses. It is surrounded by a gas bubble. Any telescope in the area would have these gasses condensing on it's mirror.

        That reminded me of a question I've had for a long time. What happens when an astonaut farts in a space station? Does it kind of visibly float around? Do the female astronauts squeek some out and deny they did it while the guys are enjoying lighting-off zero-G stinkies with matches?
      • I'd never heard of the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly [wikipedia.org] before today. Interesting information. Thought I'd share a link for other interested slashdotters.

    • Don't forget, we have ways of mitigating the crappy atmosphere [ucolick.org]. Without adaptive optics, there would be no point in making these gigantic telescopes. With AO, they will most definitely rock.

      It's a shame Hubble is our only orbiting telescope

      Agreed, but the bigger shame is that NASA is so unwilling to continue supporting even this one. HST has been its biggest public success since Apollo, and they just can't wait to see it splash into the Pacific. Mind boggling.
    • Putting telescopes on mountaintops solves a quarter to a third of that problem, since a good hunk of the atmosphere is below you . Adaptive Optics [arizona.edu] solves another big hunk of the problem. And until we can fabricate the space telescope in space it will be possible to build earth based telescopes much larger for much less money.
    • You are right and wrong. The problem is that AO (adaptive optics) has changed the game significantly. You still want to NOT have an atmosphere in your way, ideally, but with AO you can compensate for it enough that you can build and maintain scopes (like OWL) with far less resources than it would take to build and maintain one in space, and still get acceptable results in terms of the science (not just pretty
      pictures). Ground-based AO-scopes can get better imaging today than Hubble can for nearly any target

      • with AO you can compensate for it enough that you can build and maintain scopes (like OWL) with far less resources than it would take to build and maintain one in space, and still get acceptable results in terms of the science (not just pretty pictures). Ground-based AO-scopes can get better imaging today than Hubble can for nearly any target, and especially for very close targets (e.g. looking for planetary systems in nearby stars).

        I'll bet that AO can also help you go the other way - build a big teles

      • I am curious about the design of the telescope. They seem to be suspending an array of mirrors and other optics in the middle of the incoming light beam. All of those mechanical supports must cause interference. Firstly, can adaptive optics take care of that? Secondly, would it not make sense to "skew" the primary mirror so that the secondary optics are off to the side, and not in the incoming light stream?

        • not a problem. (Score:3, Informative)

          by rebelcool ( 247749 )
          the mirror are so large and focused on such long distance objects, all the supports and equipment do is reduce the photons by a very slight amount. to compare, hold the end of a paperclip as close to your eye as you're comfortable with, and look off into the distance. You'll hardly notice its there.

    • Re:Too much interference (Score:4, Informative)

      by elh102 ( 64550 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @05:01PM (#7863447)

      It's a shame Hubble is our only orbiting telescope.

      There's more to the electromagnetic spectrum than visible light you know. The Hubble Space Telescope is only one of NASA's four orbiting "Grand Observatories". Here are links to info about the other telescopes.

    • Don't forget, exposure time above the atmosphere is limited by background cosmic ray saturation.

  • The cool thing about seeing things farther away (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Naomi_the_butterfly ( 707218 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:14PM (#7863061)
    When we look at nearby stars, we know that there are (almost definitely) the same kinds of phenomena around the universe. So, why look farther?
    The answer is, using these big telescopes, we can look back in time. Light travels at a set speed in a vacuum: approximately 186,000 miles per second. The universe is so large, however, that light (and other forms of energy such as x-rays and radio waves) that was generated a bit after the creation of the universe in the big bang is just reaching us! Now, we see (and so do optical telescopes) by filtering light generated by or bouncing off of objects. So, by looking out, as far as we can, we can literally look back in time to the creation of all that is. And that, my geeky friends, is why we need giant telescopes.

    Happy Stardust/Mars days :)

    • I have a Delorean that does the same thing, and it runs off egg shells and vegetable trimmings. Let someone know I'll sell it for only $750 million if you would please. They can keep the $250 million and buy a few kegs or something. Just make sure they know they have to invite me to the kegger or its no deal.
    • Oh, for shame doc! I thought OUR solar system was the center of the universe!
    • If the light reaching us now was generated a bit after the creation of the universe, then...
      • Our planet and all around us existed before the creation of the universe since it must have happened a LOOOOONG way away, or
      • We are moving at nearly the speed of light away from the center point of creation and we are slowing down.

      So which one is right?
      • "* Our planet and all around us existed before the creation of the universe since it must have happened a LOOOOONG way away, or"

        Probably not :-)

        "* We are moving at nearly the speed of light away from the center point of creation and we are slowing down."

        I can definitely say no to this one without even looking things up, since the Doppler effect also applies to light (not only sound), and the observations from Hubble combined with how the Doppler effect works proves that most objects are moving away fr
  • This quote was attributed to R.A. Janek, and is the sentence that graces the page just before the beginning of Michael Crichton's novel "The Andromeda Strain". It would be most beneficial to science to see if we can use all of our technology to reduce the cost, even if only a little bit, from its(pardon the pun) astronomical level.
  • If you're going to spend a $1B on a telescope, aren't you reaching the point where the money would be better spent to put one in space away from the atmosphere and associated debris rather than sticking it on terra firma?

    -S

    • Re:Wouldn't $1B be better spent on a space telesco (Score:5, Informative)

      by Scott Ransom ( 6419 ) <sransom.nrao@edu> on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:42PM (#7863290)

      Not really. With the rise of adaptive optics, ground-based telescopes are increasingly able to achieve diffration-limited or near-diffraction-limited resolution in the optical and (in particular) the near-IR (which is of crucial importance for cosmology -- the current "Hot" area of astronomy).

      Once you hit that physics-limited level of resolution (which has been the true advantage of HST), the gains come from light-gathering ability. This is where ground-based telescopes clean up. The $$/area is much lower (i.e. better) for ground-based telescopes. And the upkeep costs are much smaller as well. Space is expensive.

      When you can have a telescope with near-diffraction limited resolution and 10-1000 times the light gathering ability of a space-based telescope of the same cost, astronomer's will choose that guy any day.

      Note: IAAA (I am an astronomer)

      • When you can have a telescope with near-diffraction limited resolution and 10-1000 times the light gathering ability of a space-based telescope of the same cost, astronomer's will choose that guy any day.
        That's true. If you are an astronomer whose project depends on raw resolution and light gathering power. But astronomers whose work depends on wavelengths that the atmosphere is translucent or opaque to have a very different view of the matter.

    • Re:Wouldn't $1B be better spent on a space telesco (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Aardpig ( 622459 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:48PM (#7863356)

      If you're going to spend a $1B on a telescope, aren't you reaching the point where the money would be better spent to put one in space away from the atmosphere and associated debris rather than sticking it on terra firma?

      No, putting a project into space something in space is like going for the "I'd like an inch-thick gold-plate finish with diamond encrusting" when purchasing a car. Consider this: the Hubble Space Telescope cost $1.5 billion in the 1980s, for a 2.4m diameter primary mirror. If we were to scale the cost based on the diameter of the mirror, then a 100m space telescope would cost $62.5 billion, over an order of magnitude more than the proposed ground-based facility.

      And don't think that ground-based telescopes are the poor cousins of space-based ones. The European Southern Observatory's [eso.org] Very Large Telescope (VLT) [eso.org] can achieve resolutions better than Hubble, even if the latter had been built without the optical problems, and the VLT cost 1/10th of what Hubble did.

      • And don't think that ground-based telescopes are the poor cousins of space-based ones. The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) can achieve resolutions better than Hubble, even if the latter had been built without the optical problems, and the VLT cost 1/10th of what Hubble did.

        Which sounds real impressive, until you, as Paul Harvey used to say, tell the rest of the story. To Wit: The Hubble can see well into the UV, which is impossible using ground based telescopes. Hubble can al

  • Re: The Billion-Dollar Telescope (Score:5, Informative)

    by nsebban ( 513339 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:19PM (#7863101) Homepage
    In fact, it's "The Billion-Euros Telescope" which means about 20% more.

  • Meanwhile on the cheap side... (Score:4, Informative)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:19PM (#7863104) Homepage Journal
    I was just talking with someone a few nights ago about Univerisity of California Santa Cruz, seems they're going to build a radio telescope on the cheap side, good for them. A bunch of smaller dishes over a wide area. Probably eventually hooked up to that el-cheapo Athlon studded supercomputer they built.

    Necessity may be the mother of invention, but when you've got a lean budget you innovate.

    BTW, there's this interesting other stuff in the news about Aussies seaching the heavens for likely places to host another earth. [news.com.au]

    Obligatory filching of Galaxy Song lyrics: So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
    how amazingly unlikely is your birth,
    Pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
    because there's bugger all down here on Earth.

  • I wonder.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by twoslice ( 457793 )
    If the old ones will end up on Ebay? I could sure use one that could see through curtains....

  • price shouldn't be supprising (Score:3, Informative)

    by black ninja ( 737113 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:35PM (#7863236)
    Hey hubbles lens is(or at least was a month or so ago) the smoothest man made object. We're talking about polishing a lense so that the surface bumps are smaller than transistors, and the shape is near perfect over a 10 meter or 30 meter diameter. That is where a lot of the money will go. Also, throw in a few physicists at about 80k a year, a IT guy, 60k a year, a janitor, a tour guide, a few technitians salarys for 20 years. Not to mention if something big goes wrong, your going to have to fly in experts to Chile or where ever. They aren't going to want to drop what there doing unless you pay them really well. An atomic force microscope can image at the atomic scale. It is made from a rod and a piezoelectric crystal(the same type of stuff that's in a barbeue starter). The price tag on those is about 1M, I know a lab with 3 of these guys. To get a top notch small scale lab going your looking at 1-10M. The data from the telescope will be used by hundreds of researchers.
  • Is there a usable spot for a large telescope in the US or Canada that isn't affected by light pollution?

    sPh
    • Well, you want a high location (little atmosphere) with clear skies all around the year and hardly any rain. Maybe there really aren't as good such spots in the Northern America as there are in some other places.

      But if it makes you feel better, Europe is even worse off in this respect ;-)
    • Mauna Kea, on the big island of Hawai'i, is the home of the Keck Observatory and other large telescopes, and remains an excellent site. There are political issues with the native people of Hawai'i, however.

      There is no particular reason that observatories need to be located in the US or Canada. (In fact, Canada would be terrible on the basis of its latitude alone; at the equator, every part of the sky is visible at certain times of the year. At the poles, half of the sky is never visible. Thus it is adv

      • There is no particular reason that observatories need to be located in the US or Canada.
        From the point of view of pure science, perhaps not. But from the point of view of a US citizen it would be preferable that that $1 billion of high-tech spending occur in North America. Sorry for being greedy and self-serving ;-(

        sPh

        • From the point of view of pure science, perhaps not. But from the point of view of a US citizen it would be preferable that that $1 billion of high-tech spending occur in North America. Sorry for being greedy and self-serving ;-(

          Realistically, most of the money will be spent on design and engineering, and on the production of components. Most of this is likely to be done by US companies. Even things like domes are constructed in the US and shipped to the observatory site. Instrumentation, mirrors, fi

        • But from the point of view of a US citizen it would be preferable that that $1 billion of high-tech spending occur in North America. Sorry for being greedy and self-serving ;-(

          First, read the article. The 1 billion Euro telescope is being proposed by the ESO - the European Southern Observatory. No Ameri-bucks were harmed in the planning of this telescope (though they would welcome American involvement - astronomers ain't political).

          Second, engage your brain. Even if it was an American project all t

      • I live in Hilo, where most of the Mauna Kea observatories have their base facilities (Keck is an exception, its are located in Kamuela aka Waimea) and yes... there are some issues.

        In particular, there seems to have been an agreement made some years ago between whatever entity handles the summit for astronomy (probably the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy [hawaii.edu]) and some native groups (mountaintops are sacred places) under which the astronomy folks got permission to build a certain number (int) of te

    • Re:Usable spot with no light pollution? (Score:4, Informative)

      by spaceyhackerlady ( 462530 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @07:00PM (#7864229)
      Is there a usable spot for a large telescope in the US or Canada that isn't affected by light pollution?

      Short answer: yes.

      As others have pointed out, there are lots of wide-open spaces in North America. I've seen black night skies in many remote parts of Canada, and the desert southwest U.S. One fascinating trip last year was to an outfit [starhillinn.com] out in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico that had cool telescopes you could use and dark skies. A blast, in other words.

      A couple of other points on location:

      Too far north and you lose dark skies in the summer. Midnight twilight north of 49 degrees, midnight sun in the Arctic. I spent my teens at 53 north and never saw real darkness in the summer.

      South is good if you like looking at our galaxy. The center of the Milky Way is in the direction of Sagittarius, low in the sky from here (Vancouver, 49 north), but overhead from Australia or Chile. This also gets you the Centaurus/Vela/Carina segment of the Milky Way, which is stunning to look at and full of goodies. As an added bonus you get two satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds.

      ...laura

  • distributed scopes? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ftide ( 454731 ) <nickwinlund@gmail.com> on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:48PM (#7863350) Homepage Journal
    What about distributed scopes or arrays of telescopes across many miles? Scopes, especially radio telescopes, don't all have to be in the same physical location.

    Here's a "close together" example:
    http://www.estec.esa.nl/conferences/FPD/info/tos-m m981104.html [estec.esa.nl]

    Here's a short paper minus images on telescope arrays:
    http://www.atnf.csiro.au/technology/future/2001oct /bthomas_ska_site.html [csiro.au]

    "The maximum extent of LOFAR is 350 km"

    It seems there are proprietary astronomers who like proprietary programmers always think bigger is better when in fact smaller, more spread out is the best choice.

    In principle the resolving power of a telescope depends on its diameter -- a bigger one can see finer detail -- but in practice atmospheric turbulence, the same effect that makes stars appear to twinkle, blurs the stars and erases fine detail. This is why the Hubble, even though it is not large, only about 2.4 meters (96 inches), compared with the new giants on the ground, can do breathtaking work.

    The proposals sport Brobdingnagian names like the California Extremely Large Telescope, or CELT; Giant Magellan; or the Overwhelming Large Telescope, OWL, a 100-meter-diameter behemoth being contemplated by a collaboration of European nations. And their proponents promise appropriately outsized scientific results.

    • Interferometry is a lot harder to do at visual and shorter wavelengths than it is to do at radio wavelengths. The clock synchronization is extremely difficult at such high frequencies.
  • At what point does it become more cost effective to launch smaller space telescopes? Just curious.

  • Enough Cray telescopes, how about going distrbuted (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DukeyToo ( 681226 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @04:56PM (#7863407) Homepage
    It seems to me that if multiple cheaper, smaller telescopes could work together, they could do the work of a single gigantic telescope. I mean, if you combine how ever many small telescopes it takes to get the same input area as the 100m monster, then you could probably get similar power.

    In IT we have known about the power of doing distributed processing for some time, perhaps we should let the astronomers in on the secret?

    Someone, please, educate me on why bigger is better...(please limit your comments to the subject matter at hand).
    • Interferometry is what you are thinking of and it requires a clock synchronization that is proportional to the wavelength being observed (don't have the exact math on hand). This is already done in radio astronomy but radio frequencies are far lower than visual light requencies. Visual light interfereometry has been tried but currently can't compete with big single observers.

    • Re:Enough Cray telescopes, how about going distrbu (Score:4, Informative)

      by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @05:11PM (#7863533) Homepage Journal
      You can make a cluster of telescopes, the technique is called interferometry. However, combining the results from individual dishes requires painstaking detail. The lengths of the signal paths must be matched to a degree less than the wavelength of the signals. For radio astronomy this has been done for a long time, because the wavelengths are quite manageable. The optical equivalents are only quite recent and not that widely deployed, but here [cam.ac.uk] is one example that I know of.
    • by combining telescopes you can get the resolution benefits of a huge telescope, however, you will not get the same photon collecting ability which you need for very dim objects.

      So yes, you can see very big bright objects with astounding clarity using your idea. But dim things, nope.

      Oh, and its called interferometry and is actually one of the first instances of 'distributed' computing, long before it became a slashdot topic (and before slashdot was around). Its early implementations were localized sine

  • Ground vs. Space summary (Score:5, Informative)

    by ChrisDolan ( 24101 ) <chris+slashdot@@@chrisdolan...net> on Friday January 02, 2004 @05:01PM (#7863450) Homepage
    Several people have commented that the money may be better spent on a space telescope. Here's why that may not be true:

    Advantages of space:
    * Extremely low light pollution and air absorption. This means you can see very dim things that may not be ever visible from the ground.

    Advantages of ground:
    * Initial cost is about 100-1000 times cheaper for same-sized primary
    * Repairs and routine maintenance are possible without a $250 million shuttle launch
    * Newer technology is possible, since it's less risky. Hubble uses a lot of electronics from the early 1980s.

    Hubble cost $1.5 billion initially plus $0.25 billion per year (http://hubble.nasa.gov/faq.html [nasa.gov]) for a 2.5-meter telescope.

    Since light-collecting power goes as the square of the diameter, a 100-meter telescope has 1600 times the light collecting ability of Hubble. So, if the celestial objects of interest are not background-limited, you can get the same quality image in 1 minute that would take Hubble a whole day to acquire.

    • Since light-collecting power goes as the square of the diameter, a 100-meter telescope has 1600 times the light collecting ability of Hubble. So, if the celestial objects of interest are not background-limited, you can get the same quality image in 1 minute that would take Hubble a whole day to acquire.

      But if you need an image in the deep UV, no ground based scope will ever get any image, as the atmosphere is opaque at those frequencies. Ditto for far IR, ditto for microwave, ditto for X-ray. Visible li

  • It could be worse... (Score:3, Funny)

    by bckrispi ( 725257 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @06:16PM (#7863944)
    But such a telescope also comes with a Brobdingnagian price tag -- roughly a billion dollars to build, equip and operate for 20 years.

    It could be worse, it could cost One Hundred...Millllllllion....Dollars!!!!

  • These guys are all idiots, build it on the moon! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kalieaire ( 586092 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @07:16PM (#7864354)
    These guys are all idiots.

    They're wasting money and time spending "a billion" dollars on a telescope, and the guys in California are making one too.

    They should spend it all on setting up a new MOON mission. And then build an el cheapo telescope there.

    Cuz we all know that on the moon the atmosphere is minimal and it wouldn't obstruct astronomer's views much at all.

    Radiation will be easy to block on the moon since it's so close. We can send hundreds of unmanned drones to drop off equipment (like LEAD) on to the surface of the moon. Setup small nuclear power plants like the one for Galena Alaska. The Toshiba Mini Nuke. This could run lighting for hydroponics, air recycling systems and water recycling systems inside the moon base for DECADES.

    The base could grow their own food, heat up lead to fill up the base interior for radiation shielding and have a pretty darn neat setup.

    Sure this may take about 10 years of planning and 20 years of actual implementation and the project cost of maybe 100 billion dollars.

    But imagine the fact that the world has finally gotten off its ass to put a base on the frickin' moon!
    • oh, I might add that the low gravity of the moon would make the telescope portion of the base much cheaper to build, I mean damn man, it's not going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a computer-controlled support setup to prevent mirrors from sagging like an old pair of melons.

      Time it takes to get it up there? Well shoot, NASA took how long to get a man in the moon in the first place?

      Instead of using cutting edge designs, just settle with setting up a base. Then from there use the base as
  • Before everybody starts a whine about the billion they expect the OWL to build and operate for 20 years, bear in mind we spent about that amount just for airconditioned storage of the hubbel before it was finally put up due to delays in shceduling the launch after 1987's disaster.

    OTOH, look at what its found for us. Much of that information is new, some of it has had cosmology shaking results, and all of it is extremely pretty to look at. As an american taxpayer, we have gotten our money back in scientif

  • Save money HET-style! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by balaam's ass ( 678743 ) on Saturday January 03, 2004 @05:32AM (#7866378) Journal
    The article didn't even mention the 9.2-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope [utexas.edu] in west Texas, which was built at a fraction of the cost required by other similarly-sized telescopes. (HET cost only $13.5 million.) The most notable cost-savings being that the telescope is always at a constant tilt, and is only configured for spectroscopy, not imaging. But for sheer size-of-light-bucket per dollar, such a design is hard to beat. There are also plans to build a much larger version of the HET --- I forgot how big and I have no URLs to share, but the new telescope would be at least as large as those mentioned in the article.

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