



Tell that to the people who run the 10-meter Keck telescope, or the 
astronomers and engineers working on the Gemini twin 8-meter telescope
project.  It took 7 years to build Keck I and now they are building
Keck II.  According to the December 1992 Sky & Telescope, "This
second 10-meter eye will convert the facility into a binocular telescope
with double the light-gathering power and the ability to resolve
the headlights of a car some 25,000 kilometers away."   Japan's 8.3-meter
Subaru telescope will soon join Keck on Mauna Kea.  All these telescopes
will work in the infrared, yes, but they are _visible light_ telescopes!

And haven't you heard anything about adaptive optics?  A lot of research
was done with "Star Wars" funding, and some is now being shared with
astronomers.  This shows great promise.  Soon, probably within a few
years, even the largest telescopes will be able to resolve to their 
theoretical limit _despite_ the distortions of the atmosphere.

To say that "visible light astronomy is already a dying field" is 
pure hokum.  To use the "logic" that things are already bad, so it doesn't
matter if it gets worse is absurd.  Maybe common sense and logic
are the dying fields.

George Krumins