4 ms·
SpaceX could provide a handful of at-cost launches for astronomy projects per year. It wouldn't fix anything for the ground telescopes but could be a bit of an
by deegles 7y ago
SpaceX could provide a handful of at-cost launches for astronomy projects per year. It wouldn't fix anything for the ground telescopes but could be a bit of an olive branch for the community.
- SiempreViernes 7y agoEven if they were free launches that wouldn't rank above a taunt: most of the satellite cost is in the development and construction anyway.
- grey-area 7y agoStarlink satellites cost < 500k each, compared to hundreds of millions for traditional sats. If you mass produced space telescopes they wouldn't cost the ridiculous sums spent on JWST, which is a terrible example of the wasteful cost plus contracts of nasa. They've been planning it since 1996, and costs have risen from 1 billion to 10 billion.
- saterHater 7y agoI wonder how much it would cost to get a decent camera on one of those Starlink launch missions just so it would beam down some distortion free, high-resolution pictures to the masses. Although I doubt that would provide meaningful data to professional astronomer.