I was just taking a passing interest in gigantic baseline interferometers and browsing the website....

Planet Quest: Terrestrial Planet Finder Interferometer

I realized that they are planning on flying widely spaced telescopes IN FORMATION while reflecting beams of light onto a central collector for processing into an image. It kindof reminds me of the big solar concentrator powerplants in the desert. It also occurred to me that there might be a better way, with benefits of unlimited baseline length....

Why reflect the light onto a central collected, when you can store it as digital holography which permits, I quote "Digital holograms can be numerically multiplexed and demultiplexed for efficient storage and transmission. Amplitude and phase can be correctly recovered."

So, I'm imagining telescopes separated by thousands of AU, independently collecting photonic data and storing it as a digital hologram, then transmitting it to Earth for numerical recombination. Am I just wrong here? I mean, that was too easy.