Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to It is a question of NEOs, and that's the only question

Not really.
Larry J — (archived)

First, they're talking about a timeline of 20-40 years. That hardly sounds like "near-term" to me. A collection of 20" to 40" search telescopes could be designed, built, and launched in less than 7 years given funding, and in all probability in less than 5 years. Each satellite would certainly be less complicated or costly than a Mars orbiter or lander. Mars space probes are being built and launched for about $200 million. Let's see anyone's proposed lunar observatory that wouldn't cost billions to design, build, launch, and operate.

Second, the article itself states on page 2 that

"The CAPS assessment gives high marks to space-based systems. Detection hardware could be placed in Earth orbit; at the Lagrange points, nominally at one AU from Earth; even on the Moon’s surface."

Clearly, an observatory on the lunar surface is but one of the possibilities, not THE possibility.

I suspect the real agrument for CAPS lies in the following paragraph:

"Of course, even with far-flung space-based gear, there’s also a drawback. The placement of CAPS in space is more doable given a "down-range future", one in which space has become a beehive of activity. That means a busy space station, lots of reusable in-space transportation, command and data handling services, lunar gateways, and crew and cargo transfer vehicles flying about here and there."

In short, they're pushing a lunar observatory not necessarily because it's the near-term solution (it isn't) nor because it's the best observatory position (it isn't for a host of reasons) but because it'll allow them a big budget for decades to develop all of that other stuff. In the meantime, while we're waiting for decades for the project to come to fruition, we're still dependent on the admittedly limited ground-based systems.

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