$1 billion, wow. but worth it i bet.
i wonder how they make the glass that large? in pieces that focus on someting like a digital camera or something?
anhyone know how the technology works?
Use Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffets’ money, not mine, to build this stupid thing.
/johnny
i looked at the design spec. its not glass, but a series of highly polished mirrors that all reflect onto an electrical eye that captures the image. i cant imagine the precision it must take to make the mirrors, keep them polished in the outdoors on a mountain top a nd then achieve the precision neccesary to focus over 400 of them EXACTLY so you can look out millions of light years. really cool
Yeah, sure, uh huh, yep.
And just what advantage and how could this top what we get from the hubble space telescope?
The flash on that will have to be gigantic!
All basic research is eventually useful, but the knowledge yield from the Space Station has been really minor when compared to Hubble and the other great telescopes.
Wow, 35 times the light gathering ability of the Hale Telescope on Mt. Palomar. Anybody remember Palomar? It was the be all and end all of all ground based telescopes for 40 years. Nothing larger could be built on the ground because a larger primary mirror would crack under and/or be distorted by its own weight. Or so they said. That was before segmented mirrors and thin flexible mirrors with adaptive optics. Man, can’t wait to see the photographs this baby will be taking.