XPost: sci.space.policy   
   From: kasow@panix.com   
      
   In article ,   
   Henry Spencer  wrote:   
   >In article <1111708946.162104.250480@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,   
   >  wrote:   
   >>How about this: putting 3 or 4 Hubble-sized (for redundancy & time-use   
   >>issues) craft in Jovian Trojan orbits would give you a 10 1/2   
   >>AU-equivalent instrument! That would almost see planets in Andromeda!   
   >   
   >Only if you could hold the distance between them stable to within a   
   >fraction of a wavelength of light, *and* beam the light gathered by one   
   >to another across that distance without losing much of it.  That...   
   >presents problems, to put it mildly.   
      
   In principle, there's another option, analogous to the way radio   
   astronomers do inteferometry with telescopes thousands of miles   
   apart; it only requires that you be able to record phase information   
   as well as brightness information.   
      
   But while this means recording data at a few gigahertz for 20cm radio   
   work, this would mean doing so at about 10^14 Hz, which also...   
   presents problems, to put it mildly. But this particular problem   
   may be more solvable in the long run.   
      
   	cheers,   
      
   		Steven   
      
   --   
   kasow@panix.com   
      
   "M-Theory is the unifying pachyderm of the five string theories."   
           - Brian Greene, _The Elegant Universe_   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)