Comment on A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 4 days agoI wonder how big you could get the mirror if you did it James Webb style in starship.
Presumably 7x ~8m hexagons folded up?
That is a good point though. And if one were to design a “budget” 9m space telescope, they could amortize the R&D dramatically by launching the same design many times, perhaps with different sensors for different purposes?
NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Ya, that would get costs down further if they were able to amortize it over a larger quantity.
We could also get them pretty far out with starship refuelling, but refuelling a starship back to full capacity to then go somewhere would raise the cost a lot. But imagine a 7x 8m hexagon one sent out into deep space. That would be super expensive though, we wouldn’t get a lot of those haha.
This is all a massive big IF though. Starship being fully reusable like they think is still very far from a given, so none of this might come true in our lifetimes.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Yeah. I prefer the idea of a bunch of 9-meters unless they can really perfect a cheap folding mirror to mass produce.
A small upper stage, an ion drive or something could get it to deep space.