Radio telescopes are much larger than optical telescopes because
of wavelength.
Earth's atmosphere has two major "windows" where it is
transparent to photons:
300 nm - 800 nm: optical wavelength window (approximate)
30 mm - 30 m: radio wavelength window (approximate)
Even the shortest-wavelengths used by radio telescopes at around
30 mm are still thousands of times longer than the longest
wavelengths used by optical telescopes.
The wavelength has 2 effects on the size of a telescope:
* The angular resolution (in order to distinguish 2 nearby
stars, FWHM) depends on the wavelength/aperture ratio.
Radio-frequency photons require a wider aperture to focus than
visible-light-frequency photons, so radio telescopes *must* be
larger to get a reasonable resolution.
* A telescope typically requires the collecting area to be
aligned within 1/10 of the wavelength it is designed for. Because
it is almost impossible to get all the parts of a sufficiently
large telescope aligned to within 80 nm, radio telescopes *can* be
built much larger.