Re - An atmospheric envelope for ground-based telescopes.

On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 10:27:21 -0800 (PST), Robert Clark
wrote:

I discussed a method for surrounding large ground based telescopes
with a vacuum shroud reaching to the stratosphere in a post to
sci.astro:

For telescopes of the liquid mirror type arbitrarily large mirrors
could then be used without the restrictions on the size of liquid
mirrors caused by the winds produced by the rotating surface.
...
Bob Clark

Perhaps you might consider alternate schemes with a lower technical
cost. Hoiw about spinning a liquid mirror in a shallow cylinder,
which co moves with the fluid, and which could be covered with
something not much better than a float glass sheet? This would keep
the internal wind to zero, and the external wind would not greatly
disturb the glass plate cover.....

Brian Whatcott Altus OK