Astronomy's New Grail: The $1 Billion Telescope

The NY Times ^ | 123003 | DENNIS OVERBYE

[CasearianDaoist]

Sww reply #14

[CasearianDaoist]

Sww = See

[JasonC]

Politicians love this sort of thing, if and only if the scientists all get on the same page about what they want. If they fight, the pols will watch politely but do nothing. If they can agree, the pols will happily write the check. There is no better use of public funding, of anything. And the price tag is moderate by public standards.

[aruanan]

A billion dollars, including 20 years of operation? That's dirt cheap compared to Hubble.

Let's build OWL and put people on the moon to build the OWL equivalent there. We could do some interesting interferometry with a 240,000 mile baseline.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[BlazingArizona]

But hold: here come the science-haters to vent their spleens.

I've toured the Mirror Lab at UA/Tucson, where these 8.4m mirrors are made. When a new mirror leaves the facility, it has to be taken out at after hours, under guard, at a random unpblicized time of day. The precautions are taken to avoid attack by Green terrorists, who have taken to hating astronomy as much as nuclear power or genetic engineering.

[ibtheman]

This would be a total waste of money, resources, and is judt nor needed in this day and time! There are far more importaant issues on the table, then looking into the stars, when we have Hubble! What a total waste of our dollars!!!!

[RightWhale]

to avoid attack by Green terrorists

The Greens or somebody are acting like Luddites. We had a man who did nothing but grind secondary mirrors for big scopes. Seems, like welding, either you can do it or you can't, and he could, one of a small group of one in the country who could do a particular operation. He said, "You can't push glass." That's all he ever said, didn't talk at all. If a Green terrorist had tried something with one of this man's mirrors, . . . (shudder to think.)

[Calvin Locke]

Orion has a 90mm MAK for around a couple of hundred. More if you go for the equatorial mount.

[Archangelsk]

And the screeds start.

[Prodigal Son]

See here's your problem: you have three requirements here.

Ach, it's not a problem. There is always somebody out there that went out and bought himself a Meade and then decided he didn't really like looking at the stars in the first place and just wants to sell the thing. A lot of grown men who have more money than they know how to properly spend have closets full of 'toys' like this. There's a lot of Meade 60mm scopes around here at the moment for around $100. I haven't seen any 80mm yet. I would buy something bigger- one of those nice 10" computerized Schmidt Cassegrains would be nice- but I move around too much to make it worth it. Maybe when I settle down...

I could buy a really cheap one, I suppose, but I do want a good look with whatever I do get. The local astronomy club meets every Friday here but the problem is, you can plan on Friday happening in Scotland or you can reckon you'll get a clear night every once in a while but planning for a clear Friday is pretty low percentage ;-)

[Prodigal Son]

Orion has a 90mm MAK for around a couple of hundred.

200 pounds or dollars? If dollars- that would be pretty cool. I haven't seen any Orions in Edinburgh. Don't need an equatorial- an alt/az would be just fine.

[longshadow]

up your alley ping

[longshadow]

Europeans want to build a 100m "Giant" telescope.... hmmmmm; sounds vaguely familiar. Does "the Great telescope" (which was never built) ring any bells?

[Publius6961]

This may sound whimsical, but I am of the opinion that if a 100 meter telescope is ever built, the moon is the only location for it. No "adaptive" lenses and electronics necessary.

[Physicist]

The hubble did not cost near a billion,

How much does Hubble cost?

Initially Hubble cost $1.5 billion to build and put into orbit.

Hubble's total budget in one year is in the range $230-250 million. That money does more than simply keep Hubble operating on a daily basis. In addition to operational costs, the total dollar figure includes funds for scientific data analysis, as well as for the development of future hardware and its associated software.

The concept of servicing Hubble to upgrade its instruments rather than launching a whole new telescope has saved billions of dollars.

That's from http://hubble.nasa.gov/faq.html. It is not a final figure, either, because it doesn't count the cost of the servicing missions. Honestly counted, each shuttle mission costs a billion dollars just for the flight alone (up and down, mission not included).

All told, HST will end up costing closer to 10 billion dollars, rather than $1 billion...and it has been darn well worth it.

and that figure from the ESO does not include operations.

From the article:

But such a telescope also comes with a Brobdingnagian price tag — roughly a billion dollars to build, equip and operate for 20 years.

[Publius6961]

The precautions are taken to avoid attack by Green terrorists, who have taken to hating astronomy as much as nuclear power or genetic engineering.

It's only a matter of time before we are convinced of the necessity to start shooting these subhumans.

[Publius6961]

Well... we already spend enough on grammar and spelling books. Or so I thought. Hmmmmmmm.

[Brett66]

This place sells cheap 4.5" Dobsonian mount reflectors for $100. It was so cheap I had to buy one, I was surprised at the quality. Definitely a great price for that much aperture.

Hardin Optical

They include a set of 3 eyepieces, one high quality eyepiece.

[Brett66]

Why would greenies care about astronomy, it's totally passive, doesn't even create noise pollution. Oh yeah..... they're insane.