"Feel free to keep right on arguing about why this is stupid and a waste of time until someone gets around to doing it"
This is something HN does a lot. Always mystifies me, for a site based around a supposedly disruptive startup industry. Lots of little mental boxes in many of the conversations.
EDIT- To be fair, the reason your proposal hasn't happened yet is that it's still very early days for space exploration. Satellites in Earth orbit are often like you describe, so contrary to some of the arguments against it, obviously it can be done. But even though we have countless photos of Jupiter, it's a lot more mysterious that it seems. So much still totally unknown, so they have to optimize for learning it all. Your approach is actually pretty good for refining general knowledge once the basics are locked in. As such, you're very likely correct that the Moon will be a target of such efforts soon.
This is something HN does a lot. Always mystifies me, for a site based around a supposedly disruptive startup industry. Lots of little mental boxes in many of the conversations.
EDIT- To be fair, the reason your proposal hasn't happened yet is that it's still very early days for space exploration. Satellites in Earth orbit are often like you describe, so contrary to some of the arguments against it, obviously it can be done. But even though we have countless photos of Jupiter, it's a lot more mysterious that it seems. So much still totally unknown, so they have to optimize for learning it all. Your approach is actually pretty good for refining general knowledge once the basics are locked in. As such, you're very likely correct that the Moon will be a target of such efforts soon.