yes a planet in the habitable zone of a red dwarf will tidally lock without a moon, I don't think there is any other way around it. But as you look at more and more massive stars, at some point they will be able to be in the habitable zone AND sufficiently far away to NOT tidally lock. This may occur with K or orange dwarfs. If those planets do not have a moon though, will they all be rotationally unstable and therefore unsuitable for higher life forms? If so, maybe red dwarfs, especially with moons, are preferable.
At any rate, yes it is exciting that they are improving the capability of ground telescopes. I still hope that TPF or something similar or maybe even better gets funded. They are funding NASA a little more than before, and reworking their priorities. If they take this chance to get more efficient and put some of the funding into robotic and telescope missions, it would be great for science. I am a huge proponent of making manned flight affordable for more people and colonizing space, but that needs to be a balanced with ambitious robotic and telescopic research missions (and funding advanced technology development). If they took a good chunk of Drug War money or regular war money and put it toward space exploration, we could fund multiple manned missions, develop advanced propulsion that will eventually take us to other stars, and have ambitious robotic missions too, like an autonomous cryobot mission to melt through the ice and explore the seas of Europa. They need to somehow get the average person excited about this, and I can't fathom how they wouldn't be. It is vital to the future of the world economy and will pay for itself many times over, if that isn't reason enough to make serious strides in exploration, I don't know what is. Thanks for your excellent input.
At any rate, yes it is exciting that they are improving the capability of ground telescopes. I still hope that TPF or something similar or maybe even better gets funded. They are funding NASA a little more than before, and reworking their priorities. If they take this chance to get more efficient and put some of the funding into robotic and telescope missions, it would be great for science. I am a huge proponent of making manned flight affordable for more people and colonizing space, but that needs to be a balanced with ambitious robotic and telescopic research missions (and funding advanced technology development). If they took a good chunk of Drug War money or regular war money and put it toward space exploration, we could fund multiple manned missions, develop advanced propulsion that will eventually take us to other stars, and have ambitious robotic missions too, like an autonomous cryobot mission to melt through the ice and explore the seas of Europa. They need to somehow get the average person excited about this, and I can't fathom how they wouldn't be. It is vital to the future of the world economy and will pay for itself many times over, if that isn't reason enough to make serious strides in exploration, I don't know what is. Thanks for your excellent input.
