In article ,
L D'Bonnie wrote:
canopus56 wrote:

For the future in optical astronomy, NASA has planned an orbiting
optical synthetic telescope - the Terresterial Planet Finder -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_Planet_Finder

- which, if realized, will be able to resolve planets orbiting nearby
stars. In 2007, the Bush administration and Congress defunded the
project for budgetary reasons - not technical reasons. The TPF's
future
remains unclear. The analogous European Space Agency proposal is
called
"Darwin", which is in the "assessment" stage of projects for
consideration after 2015.


Excellent reply, Thank You

Can you imagine one day, governments diverting military spending
towards science instead of the other way.

That happened, in a way, during the space race of the 1960's. The
alternative to the space race would probably have been an even bigger
nuclear arms race....

LdB



--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stjarnhimlen dot se
WWW: http://stjarnhimlen.se/