And in addition, Apple was developing Google's maps for them, since it's iOS user data that is giving Google feedback on Google's maps. Now that data is being used to make Apple maps better. And Google is out a major map data source.

You don't need either optical interference nor a fiber optic link to do quite sensitive interferometry.

For an example of interferometry without optical interference, LISA would have used Time Delay Interferometry. Now cancelled, even though it rated highly in the decadal.

TPF-I was a white light interferometer with no physical connection between the separated spacecraft.

To name two.

I actually do have a suspicious looking mole on my left upper thigh, you insensitive clod!

Now I know both my citizen number and that the tinfoil hat isn't working...

the important data on the laptop should be in sync with the servers. All of the other stuff is probably crud anyway.

I have many GB of data on my laptop (important to me, and no one else). The IT contractor charges a very expensive rate to store a GB of data, which comes out of project funds. So you can either do research, or pay IT real money to sync your data with the server (which is unreliable anyway. And we can't use cloud services due to ITAR issues). Which do you think the project implicitly encourages?

Everyone acts like FDE is some magic bullet. FDE only comes into action when you shut your laptop down, or log out. Which I have not done in months. What's the point of having a laptop if you can't open the lid and start working - if you have to reconstruct your work environment every time you put it sleep? At least that's how PGP FDE works, encrypt upon shutdown or logout. FDE would not have made this laptop loss less of an issue. FDE is a distraction from the the real problem here.

The real problem is that some HR idiot thought that it was ok to download a PII database onto their laptop and take it home. FDE won't fix idiocy.

Nuggets the size of your fist! Don't tell anyone!

There. That always works to get the next territory settled.

I live next to a school (and have lived next to three schools in the last 20 years). I see hundreds of kids going to school every day. None of them are on bikes. So demographics or not, the number of kids on bikes has to do with culture, not statistics.

I'll check the next time I walk by, but I don't think the school even has a bike rack.

If only that were really a joke, and not real life!

Whether I'm on a bike or in a car, anytime I see a BMW, I know that I'm about to witness a dick move. Planning for this, I'm rarely surprised. Oddly, it doesn't work that way with other expensive cars - Mercedes and Porsches, for instance. It does work that way with Saturns, but they're just clueless, and their fenders are always dented. BMW drivers are actively dickish.

1) Humanity eliminates all poverty, is subsequently wiped out by asteroid....CONGRATULATIONS!!!

1a) Humanity puts a colony on the [Moon, Mars], Earth is subsequently wiped out by asteroid, humanity is wiped out anyway when the ships from the Earth stop bringing necessary supplies.

It only advocates in an adversarial manner, with a focus on what you can prove, not what is closest to the truth.

What is truth? If it can't be proven, then it's just opinion.

I defer to your obviously superior knowledge of the history of space telescopes. Good information.

(Limited power? It always surprises me to hear that, given the ridiculous size of those arrays. Have they really budgeted so little for science missions? Dicks.)

Yeah, that stunned me too.

I don't think it would be too difficult to isolate an observatory module from the main station's vibrations.

It is though. Again, surprising. For reasons I would not have thought of, though after it had been explained, I guess it makes a certain kind of sense.

Further deponent saith not.

As for an optical telescope, just put a barrel around the mirrors to keep out the daytime sun.

Then why don't we do that here on Earth? Most telescopes here only operate at night. You've noticed the domes with the sliding roofs, right? I submit that any telescope sensitive enough to be interesting would get absolutely killed by sunlight and scattered light.

I honestly don't know the design process (before my time), but my suspicion based on vague conversations with people who were around back then, is that Hubble was designed to be serviceable because it is in a shuttle orbit, i.e., the mandate to be on the shuttle drove these design decisions, not the other way round. But I could be wrong.

I know that on the designs I've partipated in, we didn't like LEO because of the bad duty cycle (90 minute orbits, temperature variations), and even back when we had the option of launching on the shuttle, we'd prefer to use something else and be somewhere else. L2 and earth trailing orbits are superior for observations, and the shuttle was just about the most expensive way to get things into orbit - other launch systems are significantly cheaper. And other launch vehicles are more reliable.

ISS is not a great science platform for the same reasons, plus vibration and very limited power.

Holy cow. Never mind, I just read the Wikipedia page for He-3. It's even more far-fetched than I thought. 150 MT of regolith to get 1T of He3 (1.5e8:1 !!!), and He3 fusion might not even be realistic?

Sigh.

Why deal with dust at all? Put your scope in space.

The temperature extremes are much worse on the moon - close to absolute zero to hundreds of K if my memory serves right . In space, you just put your scope at L2 or Earth-trailing, build a passive solar shield (or use a cryopump if you need really low temps), and point it away from the sun. Voila, constant temperature and 100% duty cycle. Put your scope in space.

There's also the fact that during the two weeks of duty cycle where you can operate the scope, you don't have solar power, so you have to have some way of storing energy. A telescope in space just uses solar panels and gets power 24/7. You'll have to cool your electronics half the time, and heat them the other half, so again, power, and storage. Go ahead, say nuclear. My understanding is that the moon has very few heavy elements, so all that has to come from Earth. So add a nuclear reactor, RTG, or batteries to your expenses.

Telescopes on the moon have to have pointing mechanisms, and the moon has gravity, so it's more mechanically complex (dust, vacuum). Telescopes in space have reaction wheels and thrusters to control pointing. No dust, and also few moving parts in vacuum. Much simpler. Put your telescope in space.

That is, in fact, why we are putting our telescopes out at L2 or Earth-trailing. Hubble would have been there had it not been for the mandate that it ride the shuttle. Have you noticed that we're not putting telescopes in Earth orbit anymore? It's not because we don't have the shuttle. It's because Earth orbit is sub-optimal, and not just a little bit.

As far as comparing astronomy on the moon to astronomy on Earth, well, Earth has a lot of advantages for telescopes, and that's why there are lot more of them here on Earth than there are in space. Not least that you can breath the atmosphere and find cheap places to sleep and have grad students pull the late night shifts. There are of course disadvantages, and you could never have JWST on the ground, but the moon is just not a great place for telescopes. I'm not entirely talking out of my ass here. I've sat in the rooms where these tradeoffs were made, and the moon gets put on the list. Then we start ranking. The moon ranks low in performance (duty cycle, power), high in cost (humans in space suits have to build it, everything has to be shipped from Earth), and high in risk (you have to ask why, srsly?). Then by the wonders of Excel, the moon drops to the bottom of the rankings.

But it is considered.

That's even assuming we had the capability to build a telescope on the moon. Which would be insanely expensive. Humans building telescopes, launchable or not, where they can breathe is always going to be way cheaper than building them on the moon.

Care to link to any peer-reviewed documentation that shows the abundance of He3, or any other interesting mine-able elements on the moon? I am ignorant of the geology of the moon, so if there's evidence that there are mine-able elements on the moon (including He3), I'd be happy to have my ignorance lessened.

You haven't really addressed the question of you know, actually having a working fusion reaction that needs He3. We don't. And probably won't any time soon. What are the economics of mining something we don't yet need and is difficult to store?

There's plenty of things the Moon would be good for, such as astronomy, and especially mining. There's a lot of He3 there, which would be very valuable for fusion reactors.

The moon sucks for astronomy. It's covered with a particularly nasty form of dust, the temperature variations are extreme, and your telescope is in the blazing sunlight for two weeks at a time, so your duty cycle is horrible.

What can you mine on the moon that you can't mine on Earth for much cheaper? And by "much" I mean astronomically.

How about if we actually come up with working fusion device that uses He3 before we go start mining the mythical He3 on the moon?