http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=983737
:::Crawls into a cave somewhere, begins studying how to make leopard-skin tunics and wooden clubs:::
I can only hope this, and the resultant publicity, spurs the private sector into further advances in space travel. Let’s do it RIGHT, folks, and damn the risks!
::sigh:: First of all, aside from the perennially popular Pink Floyd album, there is no such thing as “the Dark Side of the Moon”. There is the far side of the Moon, which owing to the tidal locking of the Moon to the Earth is always turned away from our vision, but it sees sunlight for approximately 14+ days a month. Second, the Moon, subject to tidal forces from the Earth and Sun, suffers from Moonquakes; frequent stress-relieving geological events that would, in combination with normal tidal and orbital perturbutions, regularly shake a telescope. It also has to compensate for the proper motion and rotation of the Moon.
An orbital telescope, on the other hand, is virtually free of such events. It can be pointed in any direction, and via the application of gyroscopic stabilization be kept in the same orientation indefiniately, or precisely precessed (try saying that five times in quick succession) to follow a predescribed path of motion. We have, in fact, one oustanding orbiting optical telescope (Hubble) which has given us outstanding images and information for a cummulative cost of under $15B, and a second one waiting to be launched (Webb), plus a number of operationally and planned scopes working in various other electromagnetic ranges.
Stranger
Quite correct. But it is dark with respect to the Earth, which is the key.
I’m afraid I don’t grasp how this is “key” at all. How would a Moon-based telescope be superior to one in orbit?
Stranger
Because a moon-based telescope can use stored solar power to orient the telescope, scientists can be on-site (in a subsurface base), there’s no earth-glow to remove, you can have multiple telescopes in the same place, etc.
Aside from the issue of scientists being on-site (a “problem” that hasn’t prevented Hubble, Chandra, et cetera from performing breakthrough discoveries for remote astronomers) all of these claims are equally true for orbital telescopes, with the added benefit of not being tied to a large, constantly-rotating, frequently shaking body, and without the cost of transporting and providing for the gastrointestinal tracts (and attached manipulative and neurological hardware) of people in an extraterrestrial environment.
Even with (professional) ground telescopes today scientists rarely look through any optics or manually direct a telescope’s motion; it’s done by program and the data fed into a system which sometimes converts it into images for us slow, nearly-blind naked apes.
Placing a telescope on the Moon isn’t a justification for a Lunar colony. There are other, albeit in my mind highly questionable, reasons for establishing a Lunar base, but astronomy isn’t one of them.
Stranger
I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I think Julie Payette has got a sexy voice. Not just that, but her tone is very pleasant and even though she is a veteran of the Discovery, she still seems awed by the things the current crew is doing. It certainly comes through in the way she speaks to them, and that’s got to be a huge morale booster.
I’m glad Yahoo is a carrier of NASA TV, so I can catch the events at work. Earbuds are small enough that I can listen in unnoticed. Every now and then, I’ll pop up the video window, and I’ll go full screen as a screensaver of sorts.
Excellent, her shift started. Consider me planted at my desk for several hours in a row today. 