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starship-design: Re: Telescopes in Orbit



I have been thinking about this telescope idea, apertures and resolving 
power. The recent launch of HALCA in February made me wonder. HALCA works 
in concert with ground-based telescopes, allowing astronomers to simulate 
a dish with a diameter as large as 28,000 kilometers and a resolving 
power-the ability to detect fine details-more than 100 times higher than 
that of the Hubble Space Telescope. Of course it is limited by the radius 
of its orbit plus or minus one earth diameter.

So the question is: what exactly is the distance between the leading 
LaGrange point and the trailing LaGrange point? It would be awfully 
convenient if it was 300,000 km....

Lee Parker

                                                          (o o)
------------------------------------------------------oOO--(_)--OOo---------
Two people are traveling in a balloon over a landscape unknown to them.

"Where are we?" one calls down to a passerby.

The passerby looks carefully at them and finally yells back, "You're on a 
balloon!"

"He must be a mathematician," says one of the travelers to the other.

"Why is that?"

"First, he thought awhile before answering. Second, his answer is 
absolutely precise. And third, it's utterly useless."