boldly going
Dec. 29th, 2011 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twoelevena news story in the 11 november 11 science -- yes, i am kinda behind -- discusses NASA's budget problems and what space missions it might have to cut. i'd be disappointed if the wide-field IR survey telescope (WFIRST) got clobbered, because our 'scopes keep finding new and interesting things to look at. OTOH, there's YA mars rover and a mars sample return mission that i consider completely expendable. mars is a dead rock that once had a little water, and i don't expect we'll find anything interesting there.
but this got me thinking: what would i have NASA do if i had my way (and rather a lot of the tax-payers' money)?
my usual destinations are the big, damp moons that might have something living on them: titan, enceladus, and europa. finding extra-solar planets is very interesting, but we can't get there, barring a paradigm shift in physics (but see below). but finding life elsewhere in the solar system is likely to revolutionize our understanding of biology, especially if said living things are very different from life on earth. and we can get there from here.
we can get there a lot faster with better rockets, and we're pretty sure we can build nuclear-electric ones. so, add those to the wish-list too.
there is one other place i want to go in the solar system: the solar focus. the sun's gravity brings light to an annular focus (a focal ring rather than a focal point) somewhere between 400 and 1000 astronomical units out. so, it gives us a primary lens something larger than the sun, which is a little bigger than the primary mirrors on the telescopes we can build. what can you see with a 'scope that big?
so, while we can't go to any extra-solar planets, a solar-focus telescope is the next best thing. and, of course, that kind of increase in resolving power is likely to have all sorts of other uses in astronomy.
building such a telescope is likely to be an interesting problem, since one of the first steps would be writing software for fully-autonomous operation. (at 500 AU out, radioing messages to it takes three days.) that itself will probably keep computer jocks busy for years. but since cost was no object, i imagine we can manage.
anybody have any other suggestions for things for NASA to spend money on?
but this got me thinking: what would i have NASA do if i had my way (and rather a lot of the tax-payers' money)?
my usual destinations are the big, damp moons that might have something living on them: titan, enceladus, and europa. finding extra-solar planets is very interesting, but we can't get there, barring a paradigm shift in physics (but see below). but finding life elsewhere in the solar system is likely to revolutionize our understanding of biology, especially if said living things are very different from life on earth. and we can get there from here.
we can get there a lot faster with better rockets, and we're pretty sure we can build nuclear-electric ones. so, add those to the wish-list too.
there is one other place i want to go in the solar system: the solar focus. the sun's gravity brings light to an annular focus (a focal ring rather than a focal point) somewhere between 400 and 1000 astronomical units out. so, it gives us a primary lens something larger than the sun, which is a little bigger than the primary mirrors on the telescopes we can build. what can you see with a 'scope that big?
An observatory at the solar foci would have its capabilities greatly enhanced. A modest telescope could see continents on a earth sized worlds that could possibly be circling around the nearest star systems. If an observatory could be positioned correctly in a large number of locations around the sun it could see almost any planet in the galaxy.from somebody's senior project), but that seems right from diffraction limits
so, while we can't go to any extra-solar planets, a solar-focus telescope is the next best thing. and, of course, that kind of increase in resolving power is likely to have all sorts of other uses in astronomy.
building such a telescope is likely to be an interesting problem, since one of the first steps would be writing software for fully-autonomous operation. (at 500 AU out, radioing messages to it takes three days.) that itself will probably keep computer jocks busy for years. but since cost was no object, i imagine we can manage.
anybody have any other suggestions for things for NASA to spend money on?