Very interesting article. To be able to work on any one of those proposed missions/research projects would be great. I hope that they can get them all off the ground (no pun intended for the space based projects
).
The research I'm eagerly anticipating is when they turn these megascopes towards looking for Earth like worlds. That's where a comprehensive survey of possible planet bearing stars will come into its own. Hopefully GAIA will be in orbit about that time and be able to contribute to the search. I hope they reconsider building the OWL at some stage soon. Imagine having a 100m scope to play around with for this research!!!. With its light gathering power and resolving capabilities, taking snapshots of Earth like worlds will be routine. Any other planets, especially the larger gas and ice giants, will be like amateurs taking happy snaps of Jupiter or Saturn today.
Just as an aside, isn't funny how the Americans have this penchant for acronyms. They just love to reduce something down to a series of letters that hopefully sound cool or have some sort of punch
. Anyone else, like the ESA, would name their missions or observatories after famous scientists and whatever (e.g Huygens, Darwin, Herschel etc), for the most part. Historians in the future will probably look back to now and call it the "Era of the Acronym"...EA for short
