Largest scientific instrument ever built ...

[ChrisGreaves]

telegraph.co.uk

"The ultimate goal is to prove that this technology works, before we attempt to put three spacecraft into orbits at a distance of 5 million kilometres from one another, connected only by a laser beam that will measure their positions accurate to 40 millionths of a millionth of a metre."

Also, I suspect, a contender for this year's "Most accurate scientific instrument ever built" award.

[John Gray]

The ultimate goal is to prove that this technology works, before we attempt to put three spacecraft into orbit...

Hard to argue with that principle!

[ChrisGreaves]

Rather appropriate. I visited the link http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/spac ... ivity.html this evening.

Empty4x4.jpg

Cheers, Chris.

[John Gray]

They would appear to have moved that article, which can now be found here - but you have to sign up to read it (without charge).

Someone has clearly got bored with the whole thing, since it is now not expected to launch until 2035...

[ChrisGreaves]

They would appear to have moved that article, ... Someone has clearly got bored with the whole thing, ...

Well then, mister know-it-all, why isn't it called the Heisenberg telescope?
Cheers, albeit grumpily, Chris

[Graeme]

Too much emphasis on getting back to the Moon before others do or colonising Mars for no good reason. Proper science, like this mission, seems to me to be considered these days to be, sadly, less important.

[ChrisGreaves]

... seems to me to be considered these days to be, sadly, less important.

Agreed. From what I read it's all about economics.
It must be easier to get funding for a project that puts something tangible (a human) on something visible (the moon), than to harvest radio waves (invisible) to detect gravity waves ("Wot that?") with an intangible result (well now we know how that bit of gravity works)

After all, there's nothing gets across the message of a food-bank more than confiscating someone's access to money as they are about to enter the grocery store!

I confess that at times I cannot understand a technical paper about radio/gravity waves, even when I want to understand it. How much less able someone not raised in a hard-science background.

I know that quite a few of my computer programming exploits leave even computer users unimpressed, probably because they reduce the duration of a task significantly without affecting the output result. The result is still there, visible, tangible, but the time-savings disappear along the River Of Time, and are soon forgotten.

That is, we are dealing with human beings, here!

Cheers, Chris