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Part of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable t

Part of the story is everyone being shocked at being under budget and ahead of schedule. I don't know everything, but I think this is reasonably attributable to the fact that this is a retrofit of an obsolete spy satellite. The leftovers of the security sector will be the most advanced scientific space surveyor. I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities.

ChocolateGod 1mo ago
IIRC the mirror is from a spy satellite, but the chassis and electronics are all NASA.
- mturmon 1mo ago
  This is true. The telescope is much more than just the primary mirror. Roman has two science instruments, a wide-field imager (“WFI”) and a coronagraph (“CGI”) and they were both built by NASA for this purpose (optics, electronics, detectors, deformable mirrors). The WFI optics includes filters and a prism and grism for spectroscopy, and of course the very large CCD arrays. The coronagraph is a rather special tech demo and allows imaging of exoplanets (Jupiter-like) while blocking the light of the host star. (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/coronagraph/ https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/coron...). It’s a precursor to HWO which is mentioned down-thread.
  - m4rtink 1mo ago
    BTW, any idea what happened to the second mirror? IIRC NASA got 2 initially.
- willis936 1mo ago
  From what I can gather it is much more than just the primary mirror but the entire platform sans classified parts, which were replaced with NASA's optics and sensors.
dfxm12 1mo ago
People shouldn't be shocked that employees of the US government can deliver things ahead of schedule and under budget. The problems are that anyone gave Musk/doge the time of day and that we're too used to the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors.
- jryle70 1mo ago
  > the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors Are you talking about SLS? Oh maybe you'd say that is "Senate Launch System", it's complicated, job program, 50 states sharing, and so on?
  - jeltz 1mo ago
    At least it works unlike Starship. But yes both SLS and Starship are handouts to political donors.
    - inemesitaffia 1mo ago
      But the Starship contracts were awarded by Biden. And unlike SLS weren't no-bid
- ChocolateGod 1mo ago
  Musks company provides not only the most cost effective but also the most reliable access to space that is currently unparalleled by any other company. We should thank the government for spending tax money efficiently. You should blame the legacy aerospace companies whom purposely inflate contracts and take forever to do things for there being a lack of competition, not Musk.
  - Morromist 1mo ago
    As I see it Musk is lobbying the goverment to give him money to do useless stuff & expensive in space like land on the moon again - basically redirecting funds away from useful stuff like the James Webb Telescope for publicity stunts. Not any different from the legacy aerospace companies, who also lobbied like crazy, except on a bigger, dumber scale.
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
dylan604 1mo ago
Isn't that also how Hubble started? I'd assume there's a lot of lessons learned to avoid costly research on conversion of the platform.
- _djo_ 1mo ago
  No, Hubble didn't reuse any components from spy satellites. However, the chosen mirror diameter was decided by the size of the mirrors being produced for the Keyhole programme, as it meant NASA would be able to reuse Perkin-Elmer's existing fabrication facility.
- mandevil 1mo ago
  Hubble was the result of an open competition between a variety of companies and technologies. But the winners were the people who built the KH-11 spy satellite, who could offer the cheapest and best proved options because of their experience with KEENAN. Both KH-11 and Hubble had similar sized mirrors, but that wasn't because of design reuse, it was because that was the biggest primary mirror you could fit in the Space Shuttle cargo bay (1). In actual fact no KH-11 went into space on a Shuttle, but the plan up until the Challenger disaster had been for the STS to carry all US satellites into space, including the KH-11, which was designed around that cargo bay. 1: The space shuttle cargo bay was sized the way it was for NRO payloads, but it seems clear that the USAF wasn't thinking about KEEENAN when they requested that size- a design like that would be better if it was wider and didn't need to be nearly as long. My suspicion is, when NASA asked them what size they wanted for the bay, they took the last design they had- the just cancelled KH-10 Manned Orbiting Laboratory, and used that.
Mawr 1mo ago
> I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities. Things aren't as simple as more money = more good. Rapid progress requires adversity, the kind you'll find when nations compete for military power, for example.
- teamonkey 1mo ago
  Adversity forces a scientific budget and for jobs to be created in related research areas. For some reason we don’t find it important to maintain that level of funding when there’s no adversity.
lisp2240 1mo ago
[flagged]
alex43578 1mo ago
If we’re playing what-if, consider the contributions those spy satellites made to keep the Cold War cold and provide for decades of Pax Americana and a security umbrella over Europe that they didn’t have to pay for.

ChocolateGod 1mo ago

IIRC the mirror is from a spy satellite, but the chassis and electronics are all NASA.

mturmon 1mo ago
This is true. The telescope is much more than just the primary mirror. Roman has two science instruments, a wide-field imager (“WFI”) and a coronagraph (“CGI”) and they were both built by NASA for this purpose (optics, electronics, detectors, deformable mirrors). The WFI optics includes filters and a prism and grism for spectroscopy, and of course the very large CCD arrays. The coronagraph is a rather special tech demo and allows imaging of exoplanets (Jupiter-like) while blocking the light of the host star. (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/coronagraph/ https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/coron...). It’s a precursor to HWO which is mentioned down-thread.
- m4rtink 1mo ago
  BTW, any idea what happened to the second mirror? IIRC NASA got 2 initially.
willis936 1mo ago
From what I can gather it is much more than just the primary mirror but the entire platform sans classified parts, which were replaced with NASA's optics and sensors.

dfxm12 1mo ago

People shouldn't be shocked that employees of the US government can deliver things ahead of schedule and under budget. The problems are that anyone gave Musk/doge the time of day and that we're too used to the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors.

jryle70 1mo ago
> the president giving no bid contacts to incompetent donors Are you talking about SLS? Oh maybe you'd say that is "Senate Launch System", it's complicated, job program, 50 states sharing, and so on?
- jeltz 1mo ago
  At least it works unlike Starship. But yes both SLS and Starship are handouts to political donors.
  - inemesitaffia 1mo ago
    But the Starship contracts were awarded by Biden. And unlike SLS weren't no-bid
ChocolateGod 1mo ago
Musks company provides not only the most cost effective but also the most reliable access to space that is currently unparalleled by any other company. We should thank the government for spending tax money efficiently. You should blame the legacy aerospace companies whom purposely inflate contracts and take forever to do things for there being a lack of competition, not Musk.
- Morromist 1mo ago
  As I see it Musk is lobbying the goverment to give him money to do useless stuff & expensive in space like land on the moon again - basically redirecting funds away from useful stuff like the James Webb Telescope for publicity stunts. Not any different from the legacy aerospace companies, who also lobbied like crazy, except on a bigger, dumber scale.

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

dylan604 1mo ago

Isn't that also how Hubble started? I'd assume there's a lot of lessons learned to avoid costly research on conversion of the platform.

_djo_ 1mo ago
No, Hubble didn't reuse any components from spy satellites. However, the chosen mirror diameter was decided by the size of the mirrors being produced for the Keyhole programme, as it meant NASA would be able to reuse Perkin-Elmer's existing fabrication facility.
mandevil 1mo ago
Hubble was the result of an open competition between a variety of companies and technologies. But the winners were the people who built the KH-11 spy satellite, who could offer the cheapest and best proved options because of their experience with KEENAN. Both KH-11 and Hubble had similar sized mirrors, but that wasn't because of design reuse, it was because that was the biggest primary mirror you could fit in the Space Shuttle cargo bay (1). In actual fact no KH-11 went into space on a Shuttle, but the plan up until the Challenger disaster had been for the STS to carry all US satellites into space, including the KH-11, which was designed around that cargo bay. 1: The space shuttle cargo bay was sized the way it was for NRO payloads, but it seems clear that the USAF wasn't thinking about KEEENAN when they requested that size- a design like that would be better if it was wider and didn't need to be nearly as long. My suspicion is, when NASA asked them what size they wanted for the bay, they took the last design they had- the just cancelled KH-10 Manned Orbiting Laboratory, and used that.

Mawr 1mo ago

> I have to wonder what things would look like with different priorities. Things aren't as simple as more money = more good. Rapid progress requires adversity, the kind you'll find when nations compete for military power, for example.

teamonkey 1mo ago
Adversity forces a scientific budget and for jobs to be created in related research areas. For some reason we don’t find it important to maintain that level of funding when there’s no adversity.

lisp2240 1mo ago

[flagged]

alex43578 1mo ago

If we’re playing what-if, consider the contributions those spy satellites made to keep the Cold War cold and provide for decades of Pax Americana and a security umbrella over Europe that they didn’t have to pay for.