starship-design: Planet Mapper on the Cheap

["Adam Crowl" <ajcrowlx2@ozemail.com.au>]

Hi Guys...

Here's another really interesting design... for very light-weight 25 metre
space-telescopes, a hundred of which would make up an interferometer cluster
and allow terrestrial planets to be imaged [10,000 pixel images] around
other stars... all for about $6 billion. Spread over ten years, and able to
do useful work from the word go, the system would make planet-mapping
routine, and could easily be in place by 2020.

http://peaches.niac.usra.edu/studies/9801/9801Final/BekeyFinal.pdf

this one really excites me because it could happen and it'd be cheap
compared with the hundreds of billions needed for a Planet Imager built the
usual way...

Adam