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NASA is considering four proposed space telescopes and will likely launch one of them in the 2030s as a flagship mission, like the Hubble Space Telescope or the James Webb Space Telescope:
- Large Ultraviolet/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR), a multipurpose follow-up mission to the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope with a 8-16 meter (26-52 foot) primary mirror that would make discoveries on exoplanets, dark matter, star formation, the earliest galaxies of the universe, and within our own solar system.
- Habitable Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx), a smaller telescope than LUVOIR with a 4-8 meter (13-26 foot) primary mirror and instruments sensitive to ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared light to find worlds outside our solar system that could harbor life. HabEx could fly with a coronagraph, a component inside the telescope to mask starlight and reveal faint reflections from planets, or a starshade, a separate vehicle flying in formation with the telescope to blot out starlight.
- Origins Space Telescope, a far-infrared surveyor with a primary mirror up to 9 meters (30 feet) in diameter that would be a successor to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory. The Origins Space Telescope will investigate how galaxies, stars and planets form, search for water and greenhouse gases on exoplanets, and study interstellar dust.
- The Lynx X-ray telescope, following in the footsteps of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton mission, will study the dawn of the first black holes, and the epoch of reionization, when the first galaxies and light sources emerged after the Big Bang.
The LUVOIR space telescope would be the closest to a successor of Hubble, covering a similar range of wavelengths. It is also similar in size to two recent proposals: the High Definition Space Telescope (HDST) and the Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope (ATLAST).
The JWST was not designed to be serviceable and will likely only last for 5-10 years after its planned launch in October 2018. It has a 6.5 meter primary mirror. Hubble has been operating since 1990 but only has a 2.4 meter primary mirror.
The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope will launch in the 2020s.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by frojack on Monday July 24 2017, @06:55PM (8 children)
No US aircraft carrier has ever been successfully attacked since the end of World War II.
(The "Card" was nothing but an aircraft freighter with no air launch capabilities when it was sunk while docked in Saigon).
They are extremely hard to find and harder to approach. The inexpensive navy ships you favor (with your vast strategic expertise in this field), have not fared anywhere near as well.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday July 24 2017, @07:08PM (5 children)
Remind me which "advanced navy" the US has fought since WW2, and how many times the availability of 10 Nimitz carriers was proven necessary.
The US is regularly using overwhelming force against gnats, while constantly preparing for a two-fronts world war that cannot happen. Regular exercises and estimates indicate that major opponents are stocking weapons to deny aircraft carriers access to places where they would need to be to be used in a major conflict. Until the latest laser defense systems are proven to work reliably against swarms of sea-skimming hypersonic missiles and fast torpedoes, the aircraft carrier is just a big target. Which makes it useless against major powers. And you don't need 10 against Afghanistan.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday July 24 2017, @07:14PM (4 children)
You would rather use matched forces, and take you chances with the luck of the draw?
In one sentence you predict massive losses, and in the next you say we don't need 10.
Go back to your bathtub toy boats Bob, and let the navy handle this.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday July 24 2017, @07:23PM (1 child)
Ten isn't enough, long term, if you accept as untouchable the goal of militarily dominating China in the south China sea. That goal in itself is so ambitious that it can justify any and every military expenditure we could possibly make. It just isn't realistic.
But it's also not necessary. Quite frankly, it's foolish, it would be silly were the consequences not so grave.
Drop that goal and a few other similar ones and there would no longer be any need for these enormously expensive floating airfields, and the enormous amounts of money spent building and operating them could be used on more productive things.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @10:46PM
Exactly. More aircraft carriers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Monday July 24 2017, @09:19PM (1 child)
> In one sentence you predict massive losses, and in the next you say we don't need 10.
My bathtub toys tell me that either
1) your weak opponents can't touch them, and you therefore only need a few (2 or 3 in operation, one rotating in/out, 1 in maintenance).
2) your strong opponents can spam-sink 5 of them, and you'd be really dumb to say "wait, I've got 5 more a the second wave", so you keep them all home and blow shit up with submarines, planes, and cheaper cruise missile ships.
Missiles are cheap, carriers are really slow to build. The difference between having 5 or 10 is how much you waste, because there is not rational reason for the hundreds-of-foreign-bases US to put 8 carriers in play at once. Heck, even to invade Saddam, how many carriers were used? There's a reason very few navies bother to have a carrier, and almost none have more than one.
That's not even touching the big issue that most nations able to sink US carriers also have nukes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @10:49PM
Yeah but who would waste a $10M nuke to sink a $2B aircraft carrier, if their national security depended on it? Burn's on you bro.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday July 24 2017, @08:16PM
I think that has more to do with the advent of the atomic bomb and America becoming the top dog superpower than the defense capabilities of the aircraft carrier. Aircraft carriers are vulnerable to being spammed and sunk by relatively cheap missiles, which is why they are looking at adding laser weapons:
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/lasers-the-us-navys-next-big-mega-weapon-19997 [nationalinterest.org]
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-new-aircraft-carriers-will-use-lasers-annihilate-13140 [nationalinterest.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday July 25 2017, @02:38AM
On the weekend I commissioned an aircraft carrier. They painted it grey, which people say is the color of success. And they're entitled to that opinion. But my opinion is that gold is the color of success. I always gravitate to gold and I've been very, very successful. If I put my name in big grey letters on top of my buildings? No one would look because grey is too boring. My Navy guy says the grey paint job is to make the ships hard to see. The aircraft carrier isn't hard to see. It's hard to look at, because it looks boring. But it's easy to see because it's huge. And I understand that it can be seen on the radar. And probably it can be seen from space. Mike Rogers says we need a Space Corps so we can win wars in space. Very important! 🇺🇸