[djkorchi]

The idea of assembling large space telescopes is very exciting, although there are obviously many engineering challenges to solve. What that doesn't yet address is large, ground based radio telescopes. Consider the square kilometer array, which will have one million square meters of observing surface. How many launches would it take to get something comparable into orbit? Oddly, the bandwidth requirements (about one terabyte/second) for the SKA might be the hardest thing to meet in space.