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I don't know anything about astronomy but my intuition is that since we aren't going to the kind of places you see with a 9m space telescope any time soon the g

I don't know anything about astronomy but my intuition is that since we aren't going to the kind of places you see with a 9m space telescope any time soon the goal should be pushing the boundary rather than filling in a complete picture. In other words, I'd rather the one 15m telescope. Could you explain what I'm missing? Have we reached a point where the returns of increasing size are very low or is it more that there are enough big mysteries to solve at the smaller size so it isn't much worth increasing until it can be done cheaper?

adhesive_wombat 5y ago
My question is similar but slightly different: is it possible to throw a "lot" of much "worse" hardware at the problem and solve it through a different kind of brute force than just building ever-bigger mirrors (which will only ever get to low double digit metre diameters at least in the foreseeable future without orbital assembly capabilities). Say for JWST, there are 18 segments. Could you have 1800 mini Webbs and offset the inaccuracies that come from that with the vastly higher total area? Does that eventually reach an asymptote where a adding more units isn't useful? Does it reach a point where the data re-integration becomes the intractable issue? Can it ever be as good as a gigantic monolith even with an arbitrary number of units? Would the cheapness of individual units be outweighed by the number of them needed?
panick21_ 5y ago
Its not that a bigger size wouldn't be better, its more that you have lots of scientists who would like to do lots of research in lots of different directions. Combine a wealth of data sources in many different directions and many different observations can also lead to new insides. When majority of the community, a whole generation of scientists, all have to wait for one massive telescope that can then only do 1/1000 of what people like to do with it, are you really gaining more insight? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago

My question is similar but slightly different: is it possible to throw a "lot" of much "worse" hardware at the problem and solve it through a different kind of brute force than just building ever-bigger mirrors (which will only ever get to low double digit metre diameters at least in the foreseeable future without orbital assembly capabilities). Say for JWST, there are 18 segments. Could you have 1800 mini Webbs and offset the inaccuracies that come from that with the vastly higher total area? Does that eventually reach an asymptote where a adding more units isn't useful? Does it reach a point where the data re-integration becomes the intractable issue? Can it ever be as good as a gigantic monolith even with an arbitrary number of units? Would the cheapness of individual units be outweighed by the number of them needed?

panick21_ 5y ago

Its not that a bigger size wouldn't be better, its more that you have lots of scientists who would like to do lots of research in lots of different directions. Combine a wealth of data sources in many different directions and many different observations can also lead to new insides. When majority of the community, a whole generation of scientists, all have to wait for one massive telescope that can then only do 1/1000 of what people like to do with it, are you really gaining more insight? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.