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Offline asian1Topic starter

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Hubble Replacement
« on: June 25, 2006, 02:04:12 PM »
According to NASA, one of the 3 cameras on the Hubble Telescope had failed. The project to rescue hubble may be cancelled because of budget problem.

Is there any cheap / low cost replacement of Hubble?

What about a giant telescope inside an airplane (project Sofia):

http://www.sofia.usra.edu/

What about Blimp from Lockheed Martin?
US government had ordered 11 units for spy mission.

"Friday, June 16, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com
The government has hired defense subcontractor Lockheed Martin to design and develop an enormous blimp that will be used to spy on Americans, according to the Athens News. Government agencies such as the NSA are anticipating that as early as 2009 the blimp will be operational and begin supporting new ways of monitoring everything that happens in the country."

Fron New Scientist, June 20, 2006:
High-tech blimps could soon provide Hubble-like views of the sky at a small fraction of the cost of a space-based mission, a new study concludes.
Several companies, including Lockheed Martin, have been developing solar-powered blimps that pilot themselves and could remain aloft for months or even years at a time. The blimps could be used as giant cell phone towers or to detect incoming missiles (read an interview with blimp proponent Hokan Colting). But astronomers have also dreamed of using the blimps because they would operate at altitudes of 20 kilometres or higher – above 95% of the atmosphere. Telescopes at such altitudes would provide clear, space-like views of the heavens.
But actually building these floating observatories remained out of reach for decades because engineers ran into hurdles developing lightweight batteries, solar cells and a skin-like cover for the blimps.
"All that has moved forward in the last ten years, so we're now on the verge of being able to do this," says Robert Fesen of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, US. Fesen has authored a new study on the benefits of building these blimp-borne telescopes.
Wide fields - A 0.5-metre-wide mirror on such a telescope would provide crisper images over a large field of view than any ground-based observatory, Fesen argues. And while Hubble cost $1.5 billion to build, Fesen estimates this sort of telescope would cost just $10 million to construct.
Building a long-term, blimp-based observatory is feasible, agrees David Pierce, who heads NASA's Balloon Program Office in Wallops Island, Virginia, US. "I think it's exciting," he told New Scientist.
Blimp-based telescopes would be especially good at imaging objects that span a large region of the sky, says Larry Petro. Petro is an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, US, which manages the Hubble Space Telescope.
Hubble's 2.4-metre-wide mirror has a relatively small field of view, meaning it must take many images of a large object such as the Milky Way's neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy.
But a 0.5-metre blimp-borne telescope could image larger swathes of the sky at once, taking less time to make the same observation, Fesen says. And because these telescopes would have a clear view of the entire sky each night, they might also be used to discover near-Earth asteroids and other objects.
 

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Re: Hubble Replacement
« Reply #1 on: June 25, 2006, 02:21:29 PM »
You forgot to add

Quote
How will this affect AmigaOS4 release schedule, and will these blimps be compatible with the AmigaONE
 

Offline lurkist

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Re: Hubble Replacement
« Reply #2 on: June 26, 2006, 08:08:10 PM »
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an enormous blimp that will be used to spy on Americans

/Quote




I'm sure they'll sit there and allow themselves to be spied upon.  That thing is going DOWN!
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