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A ~100m telescope could be assembled in orbit from segmented mirrors and a few falcon heavy lifts. It could image exo continents. https://science.nasa.gov/tech

• tambourine_man 6y ago
  I imagine it would be a lot easier to assemble on something you can stand on and mine from, right? Only an amateur here, but I see James Webb many years and billions overdue and wonder if it wouldn’t be easier, cheaper, faster on ground.
  • mdorazio 6y ago
    How exactly do you intend to mine, manufacture, and construct things where zero infrastructure exists? Every piece of equipment you would need to do those things would need to be launched not just to low Earth orbit, but all the way to the moon, which is massively more difficult and expensive than building things on Earth and tossing them into orbit here. Building a James Webb equivalent on the moon would cost trillions instead of billions and take decades instead of years.
  • jvanderbot 6y ago
    I think you misunderstand. Nobody wants to build from scratch (manufacture?) a whole telescope. But a segmented mission assembled from components that are separately packaged and perhaps separately launched, is much more affordable and less risky than an equivalent mission that somehow unfolds. And,at some point soon, we'll want spacecraft that are larger than can be lifted in one launch anyway. We do this with the iss, lunar gateway, why not large telescopes or interplanetary spacecraft?