UH-nuclei in the cosmic radiation, present and future

A brief survey of the present state of knowledge on the composition of the heaviest nuclei in the cosmic radiation, with emphasis on the actinides, is followed by a similarly brief description of expected near term improvements. A description is given of a large modular array which could be built and serviced from the Space Platform and would be capable of making critical tests on the various models of the origin and acceleration of these nuclei. This array would be composed of plastic Cerenkov detectors and would also measure time-of-flight across the array for each particle. In the configuration proposed it would observe two or more orders of magnitude more nuclei than any current or near future array.