[Dead Corpse]

We don't have scope resolution down to the level where we could see an Earth sized planet that close in to its Primary.

I'm curious though. Let's build a ship that can get us there and back again, and go find out for our selves. ;-)

[Young Werther]

Orbit a dozen or so Hubbles and space them a couple thousand miles apart. They would form an excellent long baseline interferomerter and we would then be able to resolve the weather patterns on those planets that revolve around those stars in the neighborhood. A Scientific American article in the early 90s postulated such a scope.

[ASA Vet]

Let's build a ship that can get us there and back again, and go find out for our selves

90 LY at warp 8 is only 32 days travel time each way.

[RightWhale]

Let's build a ship that can get us there and back again, and go find out for our selves

This should be NASA's first priority. (Just to lay out the suggestion that NASA needs something useful to do.)

[Drew68]

We don't have scope resolution down to the level where we could see an Earth sized planet that close in to its Primary.

The VLT (Very Large Telescope in Atacama, Chile) should be able to do this once all of her software is installed in 2005.

The VLT will be able to see a man walking on the moon. It was built for this kind of resolution. It will be far more powerful than Hubble.