Hi Ken –

Thanks for your great reply – here’s some more response -

“We need scopes on the Moon, across the whole spectrum, but you're going to have to get the deep space astronomers on board or they're going to fight you every step of the way for the scarce resources deployed to astronomy. On the Moon you will HAVE to concede to the bulk of their wishes, but they will love you once they're there.”

Actually, my thinking is that the cosmologists hands will have to be pried free from the reins controlling public astronomy funding – they will not relinquish control any other way. This is real money, after all, and you know how some people can get about that…. My plan is simple: tell the public how little the cosmologists are spending to find the next impactor, and their elected represenetative will pry the cosmologists hands off…

“Consumables will be an issue for a while though, but you get the benefit of being able to conduct crater counting and dating to establish periodicity, or even if it exists, in the impact history much better than our guesses here on Earth.”

Periodicity is going to come in a lot faster than that… maybe 2-3 years, outside 4-5 years - studies using varying analytical techniques will converge -

“For true cometary survey I'd want something out around Jupiter (maybe JSL-2 or JSL-3?), and by the same token I'd want something out at Mars, at MSL-2, to scan the asteroid belt. These could also come back to EML-1 on low-energy trajectory orbits for servicing and upgrade with the others in the network.” –

Couldn’t have said it better myself. If we can’t get lunar facilities, then this is the combo, along with perhaps some MSX in LEO for small impactor detection and warning

On microwaving solar power, for Earth the ozone and other concerns would have to be examined by experiment – but for the Moon, this is THE WAY to get around a number of those problems you bring up

Thanks. More later…

EP