Why are we spending all this money on telescopes on the surface of the earth when they have to be able to see up through our atmosphere to get to the good stuff: space? What we need to be doing is building gigantic telescopes on the surface of the moon, where they'll have room to spread out and won't be bothered by a pesky atmosphere.

That's exactly what NASA is planning on doing, and using liquid mirrors, no less. In order to create absolutely massive telescopes, they'll set a new form of ionic liquids spinning on the moon. The spinning will cause the liquids to naturally form a parabolic shape, perfect for telescopes. Due to the liquid nature of the mirror, the telescope wouldn't be able to be tilted, but due to the natural rotation of the moon, a telescope pointed straight up would still cover a good chunk of the sky. Cool, cool stuff.

Space Fellowship, via Slashdot