Recent content by Andrew Wright

I was thinking of Toth and his coauthors. Actually, my biggest doubt here is that I suspect it would be easier to build an 80m space telescope at, say, L2, than it would be to get a 1m telescope to 650 AU. It could look at multiple targets, and wouldn't take 25 years to arrive. Not that building...

I don't think informed advocates think anything other than "this will be difficult", but they think it may be possible. I'll just add that the expected image integration time is of the order of years, with a lot of processing of the data. Brief observations would be useless. The spacecraft has...

The first paper you link is from 2021, is generally positive, has some modelling, and that work has been built on since. The second paper, the Landis one, is from 2017, is negative (but not dismissive). I find it unpersuasive. He talks about 100s of spacecraft, which is not the current concept...

The optics part of the concept has been computer modelled, in detail, by competent professionals. A convincing dismissal of this idea would need to point out errors in the models. Not that there aren't major challenges; for example, if the target has too much shifting cloud, you are very...

It is not a new idea, it has been studied for years. It is based on complex deconvolution of optical data gathered over months, I think. The positional accuracy required is not high, with maybe 1 sq m per pixel. I don't recall what technology was assumed for delivery, but not fusion. Edit...

The concept is for ONE spacecraft per target object, manuevering around a roughly 1sq km image. The expectation is that future technology would allow the focal line to be reached in 20-30 years.