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Quote:
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Originally posted by The Mad Monk
We probably have the technology to build an interferometer at Earth's LaGrange points now -- expensive, but doable, and pretty damn wide.
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I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Do you mean a radio interferometer? Or an optical one? I suppose you mean the latter, cause we already use earthbound observations around the year to give an opitcal interferometer effectively 2 AU in diameter.
For a radio telescope, using Lagrange points makes sense - as pointed out for a long time, they are the obvious places for permanent space stations, but I am not sure where they lie in relation to the Van Allen belts. If they are inside it, manned stations would be quite feasible, and are the next logical step after the ISS has been up and running for a long time.
However, you have to admit a radio interferometer a couple of light years wide would knock it into a cocked hat. Or am I tallking out of mine? I don't think so.
