NASA's Giant Pinhole Camera

Cecil writes "The University of Colorado at Boulder has come up with an interesting proposal, and NASA has decided it has enough merit to give it funding. They're developing what is in essence a pinhole camera where the pinhole is 30 feet wide, and the "film" is tens of thousands of miles away. The "New Worlds Imager" as it is called, may eventually have enough resolution to get visual images of extrasolar planets as small as Earth's moon around stars 100 light years away, and would be able to search them for the key signs of life-as-we-know-it, like oxygen, water, and ozone. Other ideas that NASA will be developing include a lunar space elevator and magnetized beam plasma propulsion."

Comments

Yet again, NASA wastes taxpayers $$$s

[Anton Anatopopov]

I am so fed up with NASA wasting taxpayers dollars on what are little more than MIT-style 'hacks'. Why on earth should the taxpayer foot the bill for these boffins to do 'cool' stuff? There should be a clear payoff for any of the money NASA spends. Be it military applications or products that can be commercialised. This 'blue sky' wasting of our hard-earned cash HAS TO STOP!!!