SOFIA > SIM

[thalion]

Two things:<br /><br />1.) I understand why they want to favor SOFIA over SIM; unlike the latter mission, SOFIA is an international effort, and at the time it was "cancelled" it was already almost completely finished. <br /><br />2.) With the launch perhaps getting pushed back to 2015-16, I think they should just scrub the mission and go straight to TPF. GAIA will pick up the slack, especially since ESA seems to actually know how to run a railroad. Yet NASA still pretends they're going to get this mission off the ground. I'll believe it when I see it.<br /><br />I've been a fan of the SIM concept for a long time; it's almost more annoying for me to see it stuck in limbo, rather than just cancelled for redundancy to save money for the *real* star: TPF.

 

[mikeemmert]

Right now, the real star is the Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy. We have actual consumer commercial transportation in the stratosphere, every day, and I would say maybe make some copies of Sofia. It's a lot cheaper than a spacecraft and gets a good return on investment. Even the highest mountains are not above obscuring water vapor, but SOFIA flies above the clouds, really important for infrared astronomy.<br /><br />We are sorely lacking in infrared equipment. The dust discs of other stars, their Kuiper Belts, the dust in our own solar system, all need to be studied. There are too many X's in this area. Also, an aircraft can be sent to the right location for occultation studies. <br /><br />I think this would be a good project for nations that maybe don't have as much money as America, but would like to contribute. Lots of technology developement was done with the Kuiper Airborne Observatory and more will be done with SOFIA, so this is doable for countries with a more limited budget.<br /><br />Interferometry is an exacting and very precise field. Note that except for radio astronomy, you really don't see a lot of interferometric equipment. So we may not be ready for an interferometric observatory yet.