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Large dishes and large networks of large dishes are economical on the ground in ways that are utterly impractical in space.

• sandworm101 8y ago
  Yes and no. Those large dishes on earth require massive support structures. In the zero gravity of space large dishes can float virtually unsupported. There are spy sats with extremely large reflectors. The biggest geostationary ones can been seen from earth, meaning they have reflectors on the order of 100m+ in diameter. Turn one of these around and we would have a very capable radio telescope, much as how a redesign of another spysat program gave us hubble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-202 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-202 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_(satellite)
  • brandmeyer 8y ago
    For the low, low price of 2 gigabucks each. For an idea of scale, the entire VLA was built for ~80 megabucks. The entire Atacama Large Millimeter Array was built for 1.4 gigabucks.
    • isatty 8y ago
      Gigabucks and megabucks is how I’ll be talking of money from now on.
    • TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Totally worth it, even if to just add momentum to building space infrastructure and increase world's competence in space technologies. Things have changed quite a bit over past 20 years. Launches are getting much cheaper now, and satellites are getting smaller. I imagine costs could be brought down, especially if the scope of the mission was limited to e.g. simple constellation for radiointerferometry.