To Better View The Universe: Large Telescope and Far Travel Ideas
I am far from expert in telescope technology, but there may be better and bigger ways to view the universe. Most my ideas are probably currently infeasible.
My first wish is for a telescope further from earth, maybe orbiting another planet, the moon or the sun. But also we could send a telescope away from our solar system, despite hurdles in data transfer.
Actually two telescopes traveling in opposite directions could eventually produce a '3D' image, which could do wonders in evaluating current techniques for measuring star distance.
Last of all I believe we can invent a better way to capture a wider intake of star light. It is just so expensive to make those huge mirrors.
Further from Earth
This is not necessarily useful of itself. But further away there are less problems with gravity gradient and atmospheric torque. Of course, as we go further, more energy is needed to send information.
Far from Earth
Even one device far from earth could help give a side view of what we see locally. Consider the possibilities of having this depth of perception.
How far away does it need to be. I'm guessing even a 1/100000000 lateral change compared to star distance will add significant dimension.
So for stars less than a thousand lightyears, we'd need to be 10 millionths of a lightyear out, which is somewhat feasible.
Travel
Here are some non-expert ideas for traveling really really far.
At some point it may be useful to use an explosion shooting two objects apart— shooting like bullets rather than rockets. So a long cannon-like barrel explodes two devices oppositely and the power of the explosion determines the speed they go out.
One weakness of this idea is that something heavy/strong must be sent to space. But two objects pushing away from each other means fuel is not the only source of mass creating movement. I guess rockets currently do this. Imagine acceleration from a nuclear explosion, however. (These ideas may be infeasible due to damage.)
A Huge Telescope
Two separate parts, maybe even a mile a part. One is a receptor of reflected light. The other is a large skeleton structure holding many sets of tables having many tiny mirrors. Each table can move to face the receptor. Each tiny mirror could be controlled with electronic precision somehow to face the receptor.
The biggest problem is that even small or tiny mirrors may skew the image when they are perfectly flat. At a mile away, the parabolic shape over the length of the tiny mirrors may be infinitesimal.
Smaller mirrors may be easier to construct precisely.
Another idea on travel, a bit more crazy is a complicated idea I've thought through, possibly for a fictional book, since this invention is likely never to be created. The idea is to have a small very light ship, with a huge rear structure. Basically it is flat, about a mile in width, maybe 40 feet thick with a million tubes sticking out a ways. Particles of fuel or molecules/atoms of some type are accelated to about 10 to 80 percent of the speed of light and shot out the back. So using half the fuel results in moving at 4 to 36 percent the speed of light. That is amazing speed.
We could visit our nearest neighbor within years, but with accelaration at maybe 10 m/s/s it would involve years of accelaration and de-acceleration.
(for a visual, Image a clover mite siting on the back of an old pentium processor.
Possibly some kind of trick for manipulating light can be used that bends/turns light just enough such as refraction, electronic tricks or mirror bending.
But maybe with tiny mirrors it will be too little to make a difference.
But since they probably are not perfectly flat maybe they can rotate until their flaws come close to approximating a very flat parabola.
At a mile a way, the change over 1 millimeter of parabolic mirror would be molecular.
manipulated liquid or bent mirror-like surface
My favorite idea so far, since bending light using gravity is probably out of the question, is to flex the mirror