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That’s awesome. Now let’s mass-produce 50 of them and put them all over any Lagrange point there is, and on the dark side of the moon.
by coffeeblack 5y ago
That’s awesome.
Now let’s mass-produce 50 of them and put them all over any Lagrange point there is, and on the dark side of the moon.
- Sharlin 5y agoThere’s no dark side of the moon, unless you count some of the craters near the poles whose floors are in permanent shadow.
- willis936 5y agoThe dark side of the moon refers to the hemisphere facing away from Earth.
- gruturo 5y agoBut it's actually NOT dark, it's fully illuminated, just facing away from us. While normally this would be a nitpick (it's far side, not dark side!), it actually matters a lot for an infrared telescope.
- willis936 5y agoI'm letting you know what they meant. It's a common expression. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Side_of_the_Moon_(disambiguation)#The_physical_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Side_of_the_Moon_(disambi...
- Sharlin 5y agoNo matter what they meant, the point is that the idea of putting an infrared telescope anywhere that's not permanently dark and cold is a nonstarter. So it would only make sense to build one on the far side of the moon if it were actually dark.
- willis936 5y agoJWST is never in the shade of Earth or moon.
- Sharlin 5y agoYes, but it has its own sunshade, with all the complexity and SPOFs it entails. The point is that at L2 it only needs a relatively small sunshield to block the three way too bright things in the sky, without having to move a lot to keep them shielded. On the lunar far side, it would have to block one whole hemisphere of the sky (ie. the lunar surface) PLUS the sun, which moves in the sky, PLUS insulate the structure from conducting heat from the surface. Oh, and radio doesn't work too well through 3000 km of rock so you'd need a relay satellite system just to communicate with Earth. And you'd need a non-solar source of power for the 14-day lunar night. But building an infrared telescope in one of the permanently shaded polar craters? That just might make sense at some point, but likely not we have robust crewed infrastructure in place. The polar areas are very attractive from a crewed mission perspective as well, because we now know there are sizeable amounts of water ice there and at the same time on the crater rims you can get continuous sunlight for solar panels.
- coffeeblack 5y agoBecause that was the important part of my post?
- Sharlin 5y agoYes, in this case it was, because there’s no point in putting an infrared telescope somewhere that’s actually not in permanent shade and extreme cold!
- coffeeblack 5y agoYou seriously did not understand that the post was about building a lot more of the same instrument. That it was not about where to put them. You really didn’t understand that?
- dtgriscom 5y agoWhat??? Pink Floyd lied to us???