ision-making processes as to what, how, and when to observe, transmitting all the steps from the inner solar system could take months (at one week per message round-trip). Without the light-speed lag the same could be accomplished in days, accelerating by a factor of ten the gathering of scientific data in these sort of contexts. If these scenarios prove to be commonplace (as they have to some extent in the probes we’ve sent out already), if the scientific data is valuable enough, and if the launch cost of sending humans and their habitation module is low enough (it’s likely to be cheap by the time the telescope cloud is built out), it may actually be worthwhile to permanently station people at these telescopes.
This would only support Antarctica-style research station populations at first, but with a bit more imagination one could see these telescope arrays and research stations evolving into full-scale research centers for all fields relating to their observations, particularly astronomical fields. If trainees, apprentices, and students are added on at a later date it turns into something like a college. Together with support personnel and the families of all those who live there, one now has a full-fledged space colony in the outermost solar system.
One could see it expanding even further, but any good science-fiction writer, worldbuilder, or futurologist can see the possibilities of a more purely research-focused colony as a setting for stories or other artistic purposes. Both in real life and in fiction, it isn’t that much of a stretch to see it evolve into a more diversified colony eventually, but unless the population were interested in investing in the construction of a full-fledged city Dubai- or Las Vegas-style it is very easy to imagine a college-town-like setting as the end point of its development.
Communicating Through Gravitational Lenses
In addition to passive observation, gravitational lensing can be used for active transmission of information. Claudio Maccone has proposed that the magnification power of gravitational lensing could also be used to receive radio transmissions from the target solar system that would otherwise be too faint to detect. This is especially interesting because the maximum range the Arecibo radio telescope would be able to detect our own radio transmissions is one light-year. This isn’t enough range to hear anything, so only much more powerful transmissions, probably deliberately sent to us, are detectable by SETI. The same sort of telescope at the gravitational lensing distance would have much greater range and sensitivity.
The same technology used to receive transmissions from aliens could also be used to create information links between human colonies. Although theoretically these telescopes, in this case also equipped with radio or laser transceivers, could be used to link opposing points in the Oort cloud, their primary usage will likely be for interstellar communication. Any probe sent to, say, Alpha Centauri would have a much easier time transmitting and receiving information if the transmissions were magnified by gravitational lensing. A pair of transceivers, one beyond the gravitational lensing point of the Sun, one aligned with it beyond the gravitational lensing point of Alpha Centauri, could use gravitational lensing to communicate with each other without needing extremely powerful transmitters or having to hope that less-powerful transmissions don’t get lost in the interstellar noise. These transceivers, in turn, could use more ordinary methods to relay the interstellar transmissions to and from the inner parts of each solar system.
Although transmissions to even the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would still take over four years to travel one-way, these relays in the “telescope cloud regions” do seem to be by far the most effective way of transmitting between star systems. The same transceivers used by probes can also be used by future human colonies, theoretically even to the point of maintaining an interstellar internet of sorts, though with years of lag time it wo