Cheap scopes
1st, great link with the Betelguese pics!
2nd, the latest S&T has a nice article about a Brit scope firm in the business of mass producing 2meter scopes at under $3M. Not linkable, you gotta buy the mag. But this indicates that this century you could expect lesser monies nations or orgs to be in the asteroid detection business or doing interferometry, once that electronics and fiber optics linkage gets really cheap in the 2nd decade.
-p