In terms of this new rendering... I figure maybe I should cross-post this comment of mine, which I also just posted on the r/space subreddit:
Wow! I'm salivating!
Not even kidding: I really am!
Just call me Pavlov's-puppy, but that giant space telescope inside the Starship rocket is...
It's friggin beautiful that's what it is!
I have no words!
Ok... Ok... I've calmed down a bit...
Splashed some cold water on my face...
So yes... (Is it just me, or is it hot in here? Because this room feels really hot...)...
Umm... ok... So yes, NEXT dare to imagine THIS:
Imagine that SpaceX's Starship meets its design specks and goals of being super-cheap to launch, with an almost immediate and instantaneous turn around time...
And then NEXT, imagine that NASA decides to launch not just one telescope...
Not just two telescopes...
Not just three...
Not just four...
But... tens of telescopes! Maybe even hundreds!
Hundreds of telescopes!
Picture Count von Count from Sesame Street chanting:
"Hundreds of space telescopes! Ah ha ha!"
As lighting and thunder flash all about for extra dramatic effect.
NEXT... once in space... imagine all those tens, or hundreds of space telescopes lining themselves up into a parabolic shaped telescope array in space, using lasers for pin-point perfect precision alignment.
NEXT... imagine all that vast array of powerful space telescopes, all pointing themselves at a target... in deep machine like concentration...
Just one single lonely target:
A little old distant exoplanet 50 light years away.
NEXT... imagine the shock and surprise as the telescope array instantly (on its first day of activation!), discovers alien life, in the form of images of that exoplanet, that clearly and undoubtedly depict alien forests, and alien plankton analogs floating in vast mats in that planet's oceans!
Holy... wow...
Nothing will ever be quite the same again in human history after that!
UNTIL... a month later...
As the telescope array continues its scan and survey of direct imaging of exoplanets, when... suddenly...
There it is!
No... it can't be... can it?
Yes, it can! Yes it f'ing very well can!
There it is! Night lights... actually mother f'ing night lights, on a mother f'ing alien planet!
Artificial lights, on the night side, outlining what is clearly cities and roads!
And then the crowd goes wild...
wilder even than a crowd of 1980's teenage girls, when Bon Jovi threw his sweaty shirt into the crowd at the end of the concert...
And all of human civilization goes even wilder still...
Because in that moment we know...
we know with certainty for the first time ever:
WE ARE NOT ALONE.