> Your earlier comment seemed to suggest that astronomers should just put their telescopes in space. There's no "just" about it, I'm aware of that, and I know

> Your earlier comment seemed to suggest that astronomers should just put their telescopes in space. There's no "just" about it, I'm aware of that, and I know it's not a case of taking existing scopes and shoving them into space. > There is a role for space telescopes, but the total number of them could be counted on a few hands. Space telescopes are an extremely precious and limited resource, used basically only for things that absolutely cannot be done from Earth. This is, in large part, because of the cost of launching and maintaining them. Satellite launch prices have come down dramatically in the last 20 years. If Starship becomes a reality, then it'll come down even further. If we're actually to ever get off this planet as a species, then dramatically lowering the cost of getting stuff into orbit is a necessity. I sympathise with Astronomers who're concerned about the impact on their ability to do science today, but its a bit like people complaining about the first interstates highways being built. Yep, we're going to demolish some houses, and make some places a bit noisier. I'm hoping that someone will decided to invest their billions of dollars into mining and manufacturing in space to demonstrate that it's actually possible, and likely incredibly profitable. Once that happens, we can make really stupidly large telescopes in-orbit.