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From: eugene@ames.UUCP (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: net.followup,net.astro
Subject: Death of Ground Based Astronomy
Message-ID: <498@ames.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-Aug-84 13:57:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: ames.498
Posted: Thu Aug 30 13:57:08 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Sep-84 03:01:21 EDT
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 30

[]

Hardly!

I am not sure how some people see ground based astronomy dying.  Space
telescopes, flying telescopes, and ground telescopes, complemented by
computers and other electronics will make more interesting astronomy.
If on the other hand, as you say, astronomers will be put out of work, maybe
I should go to work on a PhD in astronomy [I have a standing invitation
from a friend at UCSC/Lick, I decided to get out of astronomy in 6th
grade because I thought the World could only support about 800 astronomers,
I had to settle for the space program instead.]  Maybe this will get rid of
some dead wood.

The problem with all space telescopes, and the large facilities like
the VLA, Palomar, the Kuiper Flying Observatory (based here at Ames),
all the big science facilities like SLAC, CERN, etc. is that time is such
a precious resource, you may never get to use it.  The waiting list for
Palomar is about 5-6 years, and I think the Space Telescope Project
already has a back log of users [Some may be dead before they use it].
So you have to test your model using other means.

I have friends [Two of them former unix-wizards] starting a new observatory
in Monterey.  They just had their building dedicated in June.  They already
have work with their small computer driven 36 inch.  Their users include
UCB, NASA, and other installations [all small grants at this time, but will be
growing].  There's lots of work on ground systems.

--eugene miya
  NASA Ames Research Center