QUESTION:
How does the KAO see things when the plane is going 540 miles per hour?

ANSWER from Ben Burress on October 23, 1995:
The speed of the KAO does not affect our ability to see things,
since the atmosphere of the Earth is transparent; the only thing that
is moving between our telescope and the objects we look at is the air,
and that's invisible.  

As for our speed causing objects outside of the
plane to move, you must realize that the things we are looking at are
extremely far away.  Pretend that the KAO is a car moving along a freeway,
and you, riding in the back left seat, are looking out the window at
things directly to the left (just as the KAO's telescope looks out
directly to the left of the airplane).  Things close to this KAO-car,
such as bushes and trees at the edge of the freeway, are seen to move
by very quickly, while things a little farther away--say, houses on the
other side of the trees--seem to move by more slowly, and things very
far away, like distant hills or mountains, appear to be almost motionless.
At night, you may look out the window and watch a star near the horizon,
and you can watch that star, which seems not to be moving at all, for a long
time, even if the car is going very fast.  Since the things we look at are
at least millions of miles away (like the planets in our solar system) or
many light years away, the KAO could be moving at 540 mph, 5400 mph, or
54000 mph, and these objects would still seem to be still....

Ben Burress, Tracker Operator, KAO