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Thrust Ring Telescope Project:

If one considers the static stiuation only, the process seems simple. The Thrust Ring is an engineering structure designed to allow three massive objects to be lifted off Earth, and to mutually rotate once arrived in outer space. It was made large enough to encircle the Flying Castle Habitat, and to link it with the others.

Therefore, it is large. It’s inner circumference is defined by a radius over 5500 feet, with an outer band at 5800 feet, and two planar discs completing the basic structure. The outer circumference band is where most of the Gas-Cooled Nuclear Reactor/Rocket Engines, (the Shuttle Thrusters), are moored.

This makes it the equivalent of six three-hundred story buildings laid in a circle. In addition to the conduits, pipes, passageways, storage tanks, laboratories, offices, restaurants, manufacturing facilities, and spherical elevator car tubes, it has exterior space which is useful for outer space projects.

One of those projects involves telescopy. On the fore and aft planar disc surfaces, several large telescopes have been linked together for navigational purposes, and for astrogational studies. These, while large, and enjoying the benefit of being outside of atmosphere, are relatively standard telescopes. There are six on each side, and their outputs are fed into the on-board cable viewing channels.

The Thrust Ring Telescope Project is in addition to these devices. On the capacious surface of our forward planar disc, we are building six large multifaceted telescopes. To the untrained eye, they look like radio-telescopes, for they are of a similar size.

If the Ring were not rotating, and if the object to be photographed were directly ahead, then all we would need to do is combine the images of the six multifaceted telescopes for an astonishing resolving power involving a synthetic aperture of more than two miles. That is a big increase in resolving power over what has been available on Earth.

But the Ring does rotate, and we will wish to focus on stars and systems which are slightly off our current axis of rotation. So the data collection becomes somewhat more complicated. First off, the entire telescope assemblies are on counter-rotating magnetic suspensions, and as the Thrust Ring rotates, they keep their focus on the object of interest in the manner of an animal tracking its prey.

The primary mirrors of the Thrust Ring Telescope Project are similar in purpose to the reflector asemblies of automobile headlights, and are somewhat similar in shape. They constitute a spherical parabola, open at the center, and they are on magnetic bearings, with a backplane of electronically adjustable mounting points which can be used to adjust their sphericity.

The secondary mirror reflects the concentrated image onto a hexagonal bed of light-gathering Charge-Coupled Devices. It is this configuration which multiplies our ability to deal with the vast amounts of starlight collected. The hexagonal array can be made as large as we wish, and with the hexagonal cell shape extending downward several inches, we can tap the individual sensor elements in as fine a resolution as desired.

The complication is to make the various elements which correspond to the same distant location in space arrive at the memory storage location in synchronization. This is done by sending the scanning path around the Thrust Ring by various circuitous routes in order to keep the focal plane of the image in time-synchronization.

Additionally, the various corresponding elements are scanned at the same time, their information sent on its way to be collimated, and the next elements of the picture are then scanned. In essence, the six multi-faceted telescopes act like six eyes operating together just as our two eyes work together.

The hexagonal CCD array also has actuators which permit the individual cells to be adjusted remotely and microscopically to bring them into optical alignment. The advantage of building the array with these capabilities is that we can use some rather crude fabication techniques, even assembling the electronic retina by hand, and then tune it up by using an electronic diagnostic program.

The net result of all this engineering is to have a rotating telescopic array of tremendous resolving power, incredible aperture, and unlimited ability to remain focused on target for days at a time.

Now all we need are targets of opportunity.