BTW, that fictional space scope has aperture of 100" while Hobble has 94" aperture and the coming(2023) Chinese space telescope has 80" aperture & much wider image field

""You mentioned telescopes a few moments ago," said Lussigny, "with which the fall of the bombs was observed. How much detail of the Earth's surface can be recognized through them from as high as 1,000 miles?" "Our new 100-inch reflector has good enough definition to let us distinguish two objects on Earth as little as 40 centimeters apart," answered Riley. "Why then, you can make out individual people!" exclaimed Lussigny in amazement. "No question about it. When we began to make observations during the last war, the Navy doubted whether we should be able to distinguish war ships. Not only could we distinguish them when weather and visibility were good, but we could make out their class and see the men on their weather decks." "That's really incredible! What power do you use?" "We can magnify up to 1,250 diameters. This brings the Earth 1,250 times as close as it appears to the naked eye, and we can see what goes on there as though we were 4,000 feet up instead of 1,000 miles." "Why can't you step up your magnification?" asked Lussigny stubbornly. This brought Professor Hansen into the argument. "Magnification is limited by the diameter of the telescope reflector," he said. "As General Riley just explained, the reflector up here has a resolving power corresponding to a distance of 40 centimeters on Earth. If we were to increase the magnification beyond 1,250 diameters, we'd magnify the diffraction patterns around the objects observed. That would simply blur the image without revealing any more detail. We'd have to double the diameter of the reflector in order to increase the resolving power from 40 cm to 20 cm. Then we'd have a telescope as bulky as that on Mount Palomar. We simply haven't the means to produce anything like that, nor to freight it up here." Lussigny wanted to know what the effect the atmosphere might have on observations, and Hansen continued. "We cannot, of course make any observations on zones covered by bad weather, but there's nothing like as much interference when the weather's good as 38 Project Mors - Fl Technical Tale is suffered by an Earth-bound astronomical telescope. This interference is quite serious. When you're looking into the heavens from the bottom of our sea of air, that air is both within and immediately before your optical system. Slight irregularities of ambient temperature cause refraction of the light rays very close to your optical system and tend to make the whole image flicker. But if you are looking Earthwards from here, any disturbances in the air are far distant. They are practically negligible." Lussigny sank into a brown study...."