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To: C210N

sun-earth L2 is a dust magnet. Hopefully they got the risk assessment and mitigation right. Space exploration is a domain where engineering is hard (Webb is a million miles outward from Earth!), but as we can see, the payoff is fabulous, especially with pushing the state of art in engineering.

At this point astronomers and astrophysicists and planetary scientists (all those exo disciplines) should be thinking about extra-terrestrial platforms for almost everything new. There’s other L2 points in the outer solar system that could conceivably support more observatories, and there may also exist useful material around those points for in-situ-resource-utilization.

Further out, even though it’s super difficult, a mission to the solar gravitational lens at 542+ AU would have a tremendous payoff.


44 posted on 07/20/2022 10:31:09 AM PDT by no-s (Jabonera, urna, jurado, cartucho ... ya sabes cómo va...)
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To: no-s

An observatory on the dark side of the moon would likely work well. It could be repaired, maintained and upgraded as needed as technology advances. Actually, this should have been done 35 years ago.


48 posted on 07/20/2022 10:41:38 AM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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