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When I was in college before Hubble was launched, my astronomy professor told me that the original design for the Hubble space telescope was for a smaller mirro

by toss1 4y ago

When I was in college before Hubble was launched, my astronomy professor told me that the original design for the Hubble space telescope was for a smaller mirror, but got upgraded because the larger one would be cheaper to make the larger mirror, because larger mirror size was already being made. Also the Space Shuttle was sized for the larger mirror diameter. The strong inference is that the US DOD was already making that size, so existing tooling could be used. Consider Hubble pointed at a target only 200-3mmkm away...

samstave 4y ago
I actually asked this question multiple times on HN and other places, asking "what if we take hubble and point it at earth? Now that you have that thought, dont you think there are many objects that are "micro hubbles" that are already pointed at earth? MIC bots downed me to heck. Lets just imagine, in a sci-fi/Black-Mirror sense, that all the constellation class of satts (starlink, the EU one, the chinese/russian one) have additional sensors for 'ocular-patt-downs-from-sattelites' -- Lets get our hands on some of these units and inspect? Is Starlink a classified object?
- sigstoat 4y ago
  > dont you think there are many objects that are "micro hubbles" you reply to a comment about the size of the mirror, and then ask if there are "micro hubbles". no, there literally cannot be a micro hubble, because the mirror is enormous. the mirror in hubble alone is larger than a starlink satellite https://lilibots.blogspot.com/2020/04/starlink-satellite-dimension-estimates.html https://lilibots.blogspot.com/2020/04/starlink-satellite-dim... https://www.nasa.gov/content/about-facts-hubble-fast-facts https://www.nasa.gov/content/about-facts-hubble-fast-facts
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  It could be done, you could make a virtual image from many small sats. Since you see from different angles, if you timestamp data with high resolution you could even cancel out a lot of atmosphere.
mturmon 4y ago
By now, it's well-known that HST was based on spy satellite designs via the mirror-making technology, as you say. See under "size and mass" at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN According to that page, NASA moved the primary mirror diameter from 3.0m to 2.4m to match the already-developed mirror-making technology.
- TchoBeer 4y ago
  the NRO is the craziest US government agency. iirc all their workers are contracted and all their expenses are highly classified. About the KH-11, trump accidentally tweeted an image from one of them (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/trump-accidentally-revealed-the-amazing-resolution-of-u-s-spy-satellites/?sh=732cee8c3d89 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/t...) and its resolution was an international incident. This technology was developed in the 70s. The NRO has sci-fi technology.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by toss1 4y ago

samstave 4y ago

I actually asked this question multiple times on HN and other places, asking "what if we take hubble and point it at earth? Now that you have that thought, dont you think there are many objects that are "micro hubbles" that are already pointed at earth? MIC bots downed me to heck. Lets just imagine, in a sci-fi/Black-Mirror sense, that all the constellation class of satts (starlink, the EU one, the chinese/russian one) have additional sensors for 'ocular-patt-downs-from-sattelites' -- Lets get our hands on some of these units and inspect? Is Starlink a classified object?

sigstoat 4y ago
> dont you think there are many objects that are "micro hubbles" you reply to a comment about the size of the mirror, and then ask if there are "micro hubbles". no, there literally cannot be a micro hubble, because the mirror is enormous. the mirror in hubble alone is larger than a starlink satellite https://lilibots.blogspot.com/2020/04/starlink-satellite-dimension-estimates.html https://lilibots.blogspot.com/2020/04/starlink-satellite-dim... https://www.nasa.gov/content/about-facts-hubble-fast-facts https://www.nasa.gov/content/about-facts-hubble-fast-facts
actionfromafar 4y ago
It could be done, you could make a virtual image from many small sats. Since you see from different angles, if you timestamp data with high resolution you could even cancel out a lot of atmosphere.

mturmon 4y ago

By now, it's well-known that HST was based on spy satellite designs via the mirror-making technology, as you say. See under "size and mass" at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_KENNEN According to that page, NASA moved the primary mirror diameter from 3.0m to 2.4m to match the already-developed mirror-making technology.

TchoBeer 4y ago
the NRO is the craziest US government agency. iirc all their workers are contracted and all their expenses are highly classified. About the KH-11, trump accidentally tweeted an image from one of them (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/trump-accidentally-revealed-the-amazing-resolution-of-u-s-spy-satellites/?sh=732cee8c3d89 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/t...) and its resolution was an international incident. This technology was developed in the 70s. The NRO has sci-fi technology.

deleted 4y ago

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