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Mars and Jupiter have orbiters and Saturn had one until recently (Cassini). But what good do those do? They are planetary science missions, largely useless for

Mars and Jupiter have orbiters and Saturn had one until recently (Cassini). But what good do those do? They are planetary science missions, largely useless for observing very distant objects. I think what you are proposing is having a bunch of large space telescopes around planets. But this might not help very much. All the planets are in the plane of the ecliptic. Interstellar objects are not going to be aligned with the plane of the ecliptic.

ianai 8y ago
For stuff like this. For stuff we can’t even fathom yet. The world didn’t need the amazing diversity of organisms that it has, but then we can’t imagine a world without it. The “swarm” offers a lot more than just numbers, but it also offers numbers. Arguing against each planet having observatory abilities and comms is not that far from dismissing all progress on the basis that “well were already pretty well off.”
- planteen 8y ago
  You have to weigh it against the very finite budget of space programs. NASA does this as their decadal surveys. There is no shortage of ideas and serious concepts. The difficulty of putting Hubble or JWST sized telescopes in orbit of other plants is immense. They need constant maintenance as well and will take years to reach their intended targets. B612/Sentinel has been "in the works" for at least 8 years, but still doesn't have consistent funding. This would be in a Venutian orbit to looks for near Earth objects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_Space_Telescope IMHO, a more useful location for a space telescope rather than in orbit around another planet would be phased 6 months off of Earth at 1 AU. This would let us continuously observe the "sun side" of space.
  - ianai 8y ago
    I don’t see this as a this or that calculation. I see this as a civilization-level infrastructure project /imperative/. We should have some basic support infrastructure built up around our solar system. So many things would be easier and new avenues opened.

ianai 8y ago

For stuff like this. For stuff we can’t even fathom yet. The world didn’t need the amazing diversity of organisms that it has, but then we can’t imagine a world without it. The “swarm” offers a lot more than just numbers, but it also offers numbers. Arguing against each planet having observatory abilities and comms is not that far from dismissing all progress on the basis that “well were already pretty well off.”

planteen 8y ago
You have to weigh it against the very finite budget of space programs. NASA does this as their decadal surveys. There is no shortage of ideas and serious concepts. The difficulty of putting Hubble or JWST sized telescopes in orbit of other plants is immense. They need constant maintenance as well and will take years to reach their intended targets. B612/Sentinel has been "in the works" for at least 8 years, but still doesn't have consistent funding. This would be in a Venutian orbit to looks for near Earth objects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_Space_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinel_Space_Telescope IMHO, a more useful location for a space telescope rather than in orbit around another planet would be phased 6 months off of Earth at 1 AU. This would let us continuously observe the "sun side" of space.
- ianai 8y ago
  I don’t see this as a this or that calculation. I see this as a civilization-level infrastructure project /imperative/. We should have some basic support infrastructure built up around our solar system. So many things would be easier and new avenues opened.