You make some interesting points,
-especially about folding mirrors and "what if" we had made a Hubble Mk 2 and 3 - so I intend to research it more.
I honestly do think it could well produce more science than all other telescopes combined. I think there is a case to say that Hubble has... would you disagree? It's certainly expanded and radically changed our knowledge of the entire universe.
I'd certainly love to see a 4m scope in 5 years, of course. Would you stick it out in L2, or have it orbital? I mean... we've serviced Hubble 5 times and upgraded everything; that's not feasible at L2. And if it was just in an Earth orbit, would it really be a great benefit above telescopes such as Keck?
I do not anticipate a 2021 launch, but I hope that cartoon is reasonably on-point, that it will be closer to 2025 than 2030. Seems likely we'll have people back on the Moon by then, and maybe the first to Mars. Exciting times.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2018, 18:02, Share, Reply)
Well I included Hubble as part of the "all the other telescopes". At $1.5bn it seems like a bargain.
The L2 orbit was presumably chosen for JWST to limit the interference from Earth, but that adds to the mission risk as it puts it a long way out of the reach of a servicing mission. There's no sending parts up to fix it if it doesn't work first time. With this in mind, sending it up with a folding mirror seems foolish in the extreme. All the components have to come together flawlessly to a tolerance of tiny fractions of a millimetre in order for you not to end up with another Hubble-style blurfest. Given this thing is going to have the crap pounded out of it at launch and have to face the rigours of deep space, the risk seems extraordinary.
If you could get a 4m mirror out at that range then there's no reason to think that it couldn't perform a good percentage of the JWST mission. It would certainly be better than having a 6.4m one stuck in a hangar.
(Edited for clarity)
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evil_andy Stick stick stick stick sticky sticky stick stick, Fri 20 Jul 2018, 20:03,
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Nail on the head
To see further, we really need it in L2. If it's in L2, we can't get to it for repairs.
A 15+ year delay is fucking ridiculous and terrible, but it pales in comparison with it not working.
Incidentally, I have spoken with a Lockheed Martin eng who is working on a project to recover Hubble, bring it back to Earth; but don't hold your breath, I think that's unlikely to be worth the hassle for the sake of a museum piece.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2018, 20:30, Share, Reply)