Frasier Cain Revolutionary 100-Kilometer Space Telescope [NIAC 2023]
Frasier Cain Revolutionary 100-Kilometer Space Telescope [NIAC 2023] at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8NZDimTlwM
All the signals at low frequencies (I use nanoHertz to GigaHertz for “low”) usually have higher frequencies which carry information about the source. So time of flight correlation imaging is more appropriate. Any wavelength comparable or larger than the ionosphere is not so much affected. And “gravitational” signals are supposed to go right through. One of the advantages of using gravitational methods for earth based precise location is they are not affected by ionospheric changes, except you still have to separate magnetic and gravitational signal sources. You have to separate your Hertz from your samples per second. They can be completely independent dimensions. Adding arrays changes it more. Adding networks of arrays and clusters still more
There are lots of ways to get detectors far apart now. Mars and the Moon, or in orbit around Venus, where groups can piggyback and collaborate on other things, and include radio detectors for a variety of things. As cheap as detectors are now, it is better to put up a thousand or a million, then face the collaboration and synchronization costs. And have a long term view that you do not have to bet your whole budget for the next 100 years on big projects that only serve a few PIs. For many reasons, I would suggest putting a cluster over earth, one over the moon, and one over Mars as a first step. Get those working by actual testing, rather than endless low budget simulations, and see what is out there. One thing you can do for Moon and Mars is to refine their location and orientation. Drop some remote stations on the Moon and Mars with combination of radio telescope seismometer and other sensors. And build a multi-sensor network with a baseline much larger. Mars is going to sweep a larger annual baseline, and there are sources where they should be resolvable, All the things I am saying with a few words can be easily refined with GPT and groups who ought to work together, but usually work to outshine each other in a perceived zero sum game. When you create completely new industries, the global economy can double or multiply by ten, and not just continuous fights over small percentage gains.
This is NOT a technology problem, it is a global human problem. We have so much spare human brain power and time now in all the countries. With GPT assisted small groups poised to eliminate most of the existing “make a living by memorizing a bunch of words, equations, and methods” jobs, there are going to be a lot of cheap humans to spare. If they fight like rats in a box, everyone loses. If they work together globally on things like “solar system colonization” that might be the expansion needed to save the human species. I do not like the James Webb model. Putting all your global eggs in one basket, and not including the whole world from the start, and not having plans for sharing all of it, is a recipe for waste and inequity. It is relatively easy to get a few hundred million humans looking at something now. Every high school, college and university can be involved, but there are now more people working independent of those kinds of organizations because they have become so expensive and greedy. Covid pushed more people and groups onto the Internet, but they fought it all the way. GPT kinds of things are accelerating what could be a global shift in jobs and roles for humans. Or, get ahead of the curve.
The world does NOT need more centralized and narrow views of the universe. It needs global sharing of what we know, and let the new generations and that whole interconnected and much more capable human and AI partnership plan better, research a thousand million times deeper. Focusing on more gee whiz, costly technology demonstrations for the benefit of a few is not the way to go.
The moon just now is about 388,000 kilometers. Mars just over 208 Million kilometers. Venus is about 184 Million kilometers. Those places are NOT going to disappear and will have more explorers, projects and settlers over the coming decades. There might be more noise, but there is the start of some kind of civilization, trade, communication networks and interest.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
