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"why build an monolithic mirror?" "why not make it multiple times 8 meters" Cheap, simple design that doesn't take 20 years and a NASA to develop. 8m is a mas
by topspin 2y ago
"why build an monolithic mirror?"
"why not make it multiple times 8 meters"
Cheap, simple design that doesn't take 20 years and a NASA to develop.
8m is a massive gain in angular resolution over Hubble's 2.3m and an improvement on JWST's 6.5m. From the our linked article:
“Diameter is a huge lever arm,” “The larger the diameter, the better the resolution and sensitivity.”
Based on the fairing specs it looks like Starship could achieve 9m. That would be nearly double the collector area of JWST.
JWST is one, very expensive, exclusive design that perhaps only NASA is capable of delivering. What if someone other than the US wants a cutting edge "Great Observatories" class space telescope? A big, simple monolithic mirror design made feasible by super heavy lifters.
- EcommerceFlow 2y agoOr maybe a 16m "single fold". Would the complexity of adding 1 fold be worth the benefit of a 2x size?
- topspin 2y agoWith its 9m fairing Starship could nearly double JWST's collector area with no folds. Big rockets solve a lot of problems.
- johndunne 2y agoOr, put a JWST 2.0 with hexagonal segments each the size of the full JWST diameter, and fold that up into Starship... Yes please!
- dylan604 2y agoBut that's not 2x the size evenly, so I don't think that would be worthwhile. That's an advantage of the hexagonal shape that JWST used so that it could unfold to increase the size evenly.