Re: (SNES) Uh oh - he's at it again....

["Steve Brandt" <stevebrandt@mediaone.net>]

Anyway of making it GOTO?
(Sorry, couldn't resist)

-Steve Brandt

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Les Coleman" <colemans@riconnect.com>
To: "SNE Gazers" <snegazers@brainiac.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2001 11:59 AM
Subject: (SNES) Uh oh - he's at it again....


> Friends,
> 
> Since I value you all highly, be forewarned that what follows are the 
> random meanderings that occurred to me after some kid asked me "What the
> biggest telescope?" Now that is a perfectly reasonable question for a 9 
> year old to ask and I trotted out my standard answer which begins "It 
> depends ...." wherein I proceed to cause mega-MEGO in the kids as I 
> explain the differences between Hobby-Eberly, the twin Kecks and the 
> Cerra Paranal Array, as well as Aricibo and the VLA.
> 
> Then in the dark of the night I started to think - a very bad idea. 
> Simple mega-MEGO is suddenly replaced by megalomania. My wife swears she 
> can smell my brain overheating - she says its smell like I'm burning old 
> rubber bands in an ash tray. In any case, olfactory asides aside, I was 
> off and running. I started to think big - no no no, not just big but 
> hugely stupendously enourmously big. You know HUGE to nth power.
> 
> I started to think about really large telescopes in space. No, no, no - 
> none of those puny things NASA is planning to put up. Something really
> humungous. I added several stippulations - first it couldn't consume 
> more than say 35% of the GNP - well 40% in a pinch for overruns. Next it 
> had to be esthetically pleasing - I didn't want anything which would 
> blot out half the sky. Finally, it had to be ecologically safe.
> 
> Well, much to my surprize I discover than we already have such a 
> telescope available in the solar system. It weighs approximately 2 times 
> 10 to the 30th power kilograms, is solar powered, operates day or night, 
> as well as warming the planets, holding them in orbit, melting comets 
> and providing a solar wind. I speak of none other than our very own SUN. 
> Yup! The SUN is without doubt the largest telescope (or at least the 
> largest objective lens) in the solar system.
> 
> Combining several bits of trivia (such as the number of arc seconds the 
> Sun's gravity bends a tangent light beam) one comes up with a really 
> very long focal length telescope. In fact, the focal length is about
> 150 trillion meters - about a thousand AUs out. Now a thousand AUs isn't 
> next door, in fact it is about 25 times as far as Pluto, but it is still 
> within the Oort cloud making it truely a solar telescope. The gravity 
> based lens actually forms remarkably large discs of the nearer
> stars. As you know, even the largest Earth based telescopes form images 
> which scarely reach a couple of millimeters. This baby forms star images
> as large 1.5 meters for the nearest bright star [Rigil Kent - Alpha 
> Centauri].
> 
> Sending a space probe with a camera couldn't cost very much. We have 
> already sent Voyager I & II out beyond this point. There are a few 
> piddling draw backs to my solar gravity powered humugo-scope[SGPHS]. 
> Slewing from one star to another takes a lot of time. I suspect 23-24 
> years to move thescope from a view of Betelgeuse to Antares (depends on 
> rocket speeds).
> 
> Therefore, I humbly submit that once we get the Sky Theater up and 
> running that our next target should be the implementation of a Frosty 
> Drew Observatory SGPHS. Just think of the apature envy we'll generate.
> 
> Les Coleman
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