3 ms·
Pointing needn't be at all quick, as long as you're not trying to catch a gamma-ray burst in the act or the like. Agreed about the badness of LEO. Another prob
by abecedarius 6y ago
Pointing needn't be at all quick, as long as you're not trying to catch a gamma-ray burst in the act or the like. Agreed about the badness of LEO.
Another problem: a very large mirror is a significant target for micrometeoroids. It'd need to be made able to keep going after losing little patches.
- rtkwe 6y agoStiffness is a big problem too, it has to perfectly hold it's shape or the image will be distorted.
- rtkwe 6y agoTo expand the error that almost doomed Hubble was an error of 1/50th the width of a human hair on the main mirror. https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-mirror-flaw https://www.nasa.gov/content/hubbles-mirror-flaw
- abecedarius 6y agoOf course. I was fantasizing some form of active control, without the speed demand of in-atmosphere adaptive optics. This might be needed anyway after micrometeoroid damage.