re space marketing would be wonderfull fcrary ucsu colorado edu frank crary writes in article c w t fph cunews carleton ca wcsbeau superior carleton ca opirg writes i don t think that idea means what you think it does having everyone on earth subject to some ad agency s poor taste is an abomination abomination n loathing odious or degrading habit or act an object of disgust oxford concise dictionary maybe you don t mind having every part of your life saturated with commercials but many of us loathe it while i m sure sagan considers it sacrilegious that wouldn t be because of his doubtfull credibility as an astronomer modern ground based visible light astronomy what these proposed orbiting billboards would upset is already a dying field the opacity and distortions caused by the atmosphere itself have driven most of the field to use radio far infrared or space based telescopes in any case a bright point of light passing through the field doesn t ruin observations if that were the case the thousands of existing satellites would have already done so satelliets might not seem so bright to the eyes but as far as astronomy is concerned they are extremely bright frank crary cu boulder tell that to the people who run the meter keck telescope or the astronomers and engineers working on the gemini twin meter telescope project it took years to build keck i and now they are building keck ii according to the december sky telescope this second meter eye will convert the facility into a binocular telescope with double the light gathering power and the ability to resolve the headlights of a car some kilometers away japan s meter subaru telescope will soon join keck on mauna kea all these telescopes will work in the infrared yes but they are visible light telescopes and haven t you heard anything about adaptive optics a lot of research was done with star wars funding and some is now being shared with astronomers this shows great promise soon probably within a few years even the largest telescopes will be able to resolve to their theoretical limit despite the distortions of the atmosphere to say that visible light astronomy is already a dying field is pure hokum to use the logic that things are already bad so it doesn t matter if it gets worse is absurd maybe common sense and logic are the dying fields george krumins pufferfish observatory the universe had its origin gfk uxa cso uiuc edu in two hockeysticks colliding home of the hockeystick memorial telescope
