Limits to telescope size

alexterrell_at_yahoo.com
Date: 02/20/05 

To: sci-space-science@moderators.isc.org
Date: 20 Feb 2005 15:24:38 -0800

Just seen some pictures of Hubble, and The "Very Large Telescope"
(original name) in Chile. It made me think.

With a reasonable space based industry, moon mining, metal working,
aluminium and glass production, precision engineering, how big an
optical telescope could be built in zero-g?

What are the limits? Could a 100m diameter optical telescope be built?
what would it see?

As for radio telescopes, what are the limits are baseline inferometry?
what would a few telescopes, each say 3km across, in solar orbit, say 1
billion km apart be able to achieve?

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