The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #161123   Message #3830155
Posted By: David Carter (UK)
03-Jan-17 - 10:41 AM
Thread Name: BS: Space program goals
Subject: RE: BS: Space program goals
And no, the searches don't "miss most of the high velocity objects". These things are in elliptical orbits around the sun, and their velocity is determined by Kepler's laws. If they have really high velocity they are on hyperbolic orbits, and nothing to worry about because they are not bound to the solar system. The 10% which havn't been found are either small, or far away. If they are far away it while be a while before they get any closer. But LSST, which has 16 times the collecting area of a single Pan-STARRS telescope, and a survey of much higher cadence, will be good at detecting these. But if you can build an 8 metre wide field telescope plus associated CCD or other detectors and have it ready before 2021, then go right ahead.