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The quest to build a telescope on the moon
- Animats 2y agoThe JPL position is that telescopes should be in space, not on Luna. Too much dust. Too much gravity. A lunar farside optical telescope was proposed, but it would be inferior to one in open space.
- yinser 2y agoYou didn't read the article, it _specifically_ mentions JPL's proposal for the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope concept "nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (J.P.L.) is also exploring the idea of a radio-wave detector, the Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (L.C.R.T.), inside a 1.3-kilometre-wide moon crater." https://www.nasa.gov/general/lunar-crater-radio-telescope-lcrt-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon/ https://www.nasa.gov/general/lunar-crater-radio-telescope-lc...
- Animats 2y agoThat's a much simpler project. It's deployment, not construction. Two metric tons of mesh have to be soft landed at the bottom of the crater. Then mobile robots pull it open into a large dish.[1] There's a cheaper approach where the mesh is pulled open by weights shot out from the central lander. Cost estimates are in the US$1 billion to US$10 billion range, most of which is shipping cost to Luna Farside. [1] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/d4pivfipd9rpb19fm87lq/LCRT_NIAC_Phase_1_Final_Report.pdf https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/d4pivfipd9rpb19fm87lq/LCRT_NI...
- yinser 2y agoIf you don't see the contradiction in JPL having an active research project to put a radio telescope on the moon and your original statement then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
- Animats 2y agoFrom the article: "FarView would comprise a hundred thousand metal antennas made on-site by autonomous robots. It would cover a Baltimore-size swath of the moon." That's way beyond anything possible today. What JPL proposes is just packing up a big thing tightly and unpacking it at the destination. Space projects have been doing that for decades. When someone assembles a solar farm in the desert with no humans on site, we can talk about doing something like that on Luna.
- tim333 2y agoThe SpaceX 'Starship Human Landing System' is supposed to land on the moon in 2025 or so and should have a cargo variant able to deliver quite a few tons of gear. It would interesting to send some prototype telescope stuff. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS)
- gwbas1c 2y ago> Lunar ice could provide hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel, which could power trips to deep space. Stop. Right. There. Time to read A City on Mars: https://www.acityonmars.com/ https://www.acityonmars.com/ This is quickly turning into a pipe dream. Someone is letting their imagination run away. There simply isn't enough water on the moon to make hydrogen / oxygen for deep space travel.
- pseudolus 2y agohttp://archive.today/U7ZfW http://archive.today/U7ZfW
- postalcoder 2y agoarticles like this make me wish I could be reading it on a magazine
- s0ss 2y agoThat’s available! I miss the tactile experience myself. Hmmmm…
- admissionsguy 2y agoIn 2022, I bought a yearly subscription of the paper version of Scientific American in an attempt to recreate the childhood feeling of reading it. I am glad I did but I only received six out of 12 issues, in two packets of three. Plus it has become highly political, so I won't be doing it again.
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- jmclnx 2y agoThat would be great if that can happen, plus I hope the can build a Radio Telescope on the Moon with it. That should avoid all the Radio Interference that plagues Earth Based Radio Telescopes.
- snickerbockers 2y agoI'm pretty skeptical, as a general rule if something has never been done on earth before you're not going to do it in space. Not that I think this is impossible, but nobody even has autonomous mining and construction abilities on earth, and they're going to do that on the moon with an extremely limited ability to perform manual maintenance (I'm sure they have some sort of remote manually-operated drone in mind but again, nobody's ever even done that on earth and they're going to do it in space). TFA also left out that it's not only going to be a PoC for autonomous mining and manufacturing, but also autonomous refining. When the Toyota corporation built my car they didn't start with unrefined steel ore. I don't even know how they're going to do that in a vacuum where there's no fires and no convection.
- btbuildem 2y agoIt's a WILD assumption that they won't prototype their setup "locally" in a most moon-like location they can find, before going to the dark side of the moon.
- sandworm101 2y ago>> if something has never been done on earth before you're not going to do it in space. Well, with the rate at which we are launching thousands of loud satellites, radio astronomy may simply have to move to space. Maybe not the moon, but we will need to get the telescopes somewhere above the satellite constellations if we want to continue doing radio astronomy.
- shiroiushi 2y agoDo we actually want to continue doing radio astronomy? I'm not sure we do. Sure, some people would like it, but where is the money going to come from? Are governments really willing to spend the money needed to move radio astronomy into space or to the Moon? I seriously doubt it. I think it's pretty obvious that we (humanity) care more about having thousands of noisy communications satellites than it does about doing radio astronomy.
- Animats 2y ago> When the Toyota corporation built my car they didn't start with unrefined steel ore. Well, actually, they did.[1] Toyota has their own steel mills. "Great cars are made with great steel". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aichi_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aichi_Steel
- irunmyownemail 2y agoI don't know about radio telescopes but it does sound like a good platform, no atmosphere, no magnetosphere, etc. Is it just me or does this sounds like a more viable goal for the next 20 years, than Mars.
- SubiculumCode 2y agoWhy would a moon telescope be desirable over a satellite telescope?
- dagw 2y agoFTA: "Unlike telescopes such as the Hubble and the James Webb, which are made from mirrors and lenses, FarView would comprise a hundred thousand metal antennas made on-site by autonomous robots. It would cover a Baltimore-size swath of the moon." They want to build a radio telescope, not a simple optical telescope.
- SubiculumCode 2y agoThanks. Still, this doesn't answer my question about why build it on the moon and not in space.
- tekla 2y agoI think humans currently have a hard time deploying a 20km by 20km object in space.
- echelon 2y agoTo be fair, we also have this problem on the moon.
- jessriedel 2y agoIt’s easier to deploy in the weightless environment of orbit than on the moon with gravity. Consistent with this, the largest off-Earth structure ever built (the ISS) is in orbit, not on a heavenly body.
- itishappy 2y agoSure, but it's even easier to not have to worry about deploying at all. The largest structures we've built were built in-situ.
- sorenKaram 2y agoimagine a roller coaster on the moon...
- sorenKaram 2y agoA roller coaster could actually be a good way to move things around. With lower gravity than earth, and initial thrust could take a payload a predetermined distance effectively.
- ck2 2y agoIt's just so simple and clean though, if we can't do something this basic yet so useful, we should just stop all the space stuff and go back to bombing each other to death until the planet completely melts and floods in 50 years because we're done. Type-Zero civilization. * https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/niac2020_bandyopadhyay.jpg https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/niac2020_ban... * https://www.nasa.gov/general/lunar-crater-radio-telescope-lcrt-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon/ https://www.nasa.gov/general/lunar-crater-radio-telescope-lc...
- HumblyTossed 2y ago> a small startup called Lunar Resources Ah yes, the 'ole investor pump and dump. Get a bunch of people excited enough to give you millions, make enough to retire and then just disappear in a whiff.
- bschmidt1 2y ago[flagged]
- martinclayton 2y agoThere was an interesting Fraser Cain YT vid a couple of weeks back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcR6gs0Up6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcR6gs0Up6k Interview with Gerard van Belle, director or the Lowell Observatory. The topic was space/lunar optical interferometers. It's easier to do this on the Moon than in space, as there's no formation flying. He's got a "menu" of projects from a few/small unit telescopes right up to lunar manufacturing like this.
- BurningFrog 2y agoLet's say this works, and they paint a lot of metal lines that form workable antennas on the moon surface. How do you aim that thing at a specific point in the sky?
- CmdrLoskene 2y agoIt's called phased array. Pretty mature tech now.
- jandrese 2y agoProbably like Arecibo, by moving the collector around in relative to the reflector material. To be honest though aiming the mirror is way down their list of problems to solve to make this work. They basically want to create several brand new industries in an inhospitable environment with little to no payoff. It is hard to see a path to success in any reasonable timeframe.